THE 


COMIC   HISTOEY 


OP 


THE  UNITED  STATES, 


FROM  A  PERIOD  PRIOR  TO  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA 
TO  TIMES  LONG  SUBSEQUENT  TO  THE  PRESENT. 


BY  JOHN  D.   SHERWOOD. 


"  Quamquam  ridentem  dicere  verum 
Quid  vetat  ? " 

HORACE,  Satire  I. 

"  A  man  may  say  a  Wise  thing  though  he  say  it  with  a  Laugh." 

Old  Song 


WITH  ORIGINAL  ILLUSTRATIONS  BY  HARRY  SCRATCHLY. 


SECOND  EDITION. 


BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY. 

GTfcc  Htoermfie  ]3rrec, 
1881. 

/  9  S/f 


"7 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  2869,  by 

FIELDS,    OSQOOD,    A    CO., 
in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  for  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


DEDICATION. 


TO    MY    WIFE. 


PREFACE  TO  A  NEW  EDITION. 


MY  Publishers  inform  me  that  you,  my  dear  Pub- 
lic, unsated  with  the  fun  created  by  the  former  edi- 
tions of  the  humorous  and  sunny  side  of  our  National 
Story,  as  presented  in  my  Comic  History,  are  asking 
to  have  the  table  reset,  and  another  chance  at  a 
"  square  meal."  So  with  pleased  alacrity  and  a 
smiling  face  I  take  down  from  behind  the  pantry 
door,  put  on  and  smooth  down,  my  clean  white 
apron,  and  hasten  to  serve  you. 

Of  course,  I  cannot  make  a  bran,  spick-span-new 
History,  any  more  than  can  the  waiter  invent,  even 
to  please  a  good,  well-paying  customer,  a  new  fish, 
meat,  or  vegetable.  But  I  am  pleased  to  think  that- 
with  such  a  menu  as  I  am  able  to  place  before  you, 
on  the  choicely  decorated  china  which  the  Publish- 
ers supply,  you  are  sure  to  be  abundantly  satisfied, 
and  will  rise  from  the  bountiful  table,  exclaiming  to 
your  nearest  table  mate,  as  jolly  and  wise  Kit  North 
to  Lord  Jeffrey  in  the  rare  symposium  of  "  Noctes 
AmbrosianaB  " :  — 

"  Confess  it  Jeffrey  (for  you  needs  must  know), 
That  Jest  and  Earnest  hand  in  hand  may  go; 
That  sober  Truth  may  be  inweaved  with  fun, 
Philosophy  be  pointed  in  a  pun ; 
Candor  be  calm  beneath  a  forehead  knit, 
Keenly  yet  kindly  flash  the  shafts  of  Wit." 

STONE  LODGE;  J.  D.  S. 

Englewood :  N.  J.,  1881. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


SUBJECTS. 

THE  COMPACT  OF  DISTINGUISHED  COMEDIANS  EXPRESSLY  EN- 
GAGED FOR  THIS  PERFORMANCE   ....        Cou-front-u*  Piece. 

COLUMBUS  DISCOVERS  AMERICA Page  39 

THE  READER  SCRAPES  ACQUAINTANCE  WITH  THE  AUTHOR         .  41 

EXTERNAL  VIEW  OF  THE  AUTHOR'S  HEAD        ....  48 

INTERNAL  VIEW  OF  THE  SAME        .......  49 

AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY 55 

TIME  STOCKING  AMERICA 59 

THE  PICTURED  ROCKS  AT  TAUNTON  ATTRIBUTED  TO  THE  NORTH- 
MEN, OR  SKALDS,  OF  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTURY     ...  66 

LANDING  OF  COLUMBUS 68 

DISCOVERY  OF  NEWFOUNDLAND 71 

SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH  INTRODUCES  SMOKING  TO  THE  ENGLISH 

COURT 74 

AN  INDIAN  RESERVATION 81 

THE  FIRST  YEAR'S  CROP  IN  THE  NEW  SETTLEMENTS  ...  87 

DRAKE  WITH  HIS  FLEET  SAILS  ROUND  THE  WORLD          .       .  94 

MAP  OF  MARYLAND    . 105 

ORIGINAL  FULL-LENGTH  PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN  SMITH  .       .       .  110 

LANDING  OF  THE  PILGRIM  FATHERS  AND  MOTHERS     .       .       .  118 


8  LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

THE  SPIRITS  OF  THE  AGE  LATINO  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OP  NEW 

YORK 128 

DCTCH  GENTLEMAN  TRAPINO  WITH  THE  INDIANS        .       .       .  134 

NEW  JERSEY  SETTLED 142 

FULL-LENGTH  PORTRAIT  OF  PENN   .       .       .       .       .       .       .  144 

THE  CITY  OF  BROTHERLY  LOVE  IN  1681  AND  1869  .       .       .  147 

TEMPTATION  ;  OR,  THE  FIRST  AMERICAN  "  RING  "         ...  153 

WOMAN'S  RIGHTS  IN  1637 158 

THE  PENALTIES  OF  WITCHCRAFT  IN  1692  AND  1869     .       .       .171 

COTTON  MATHER  EXORCISING  A  WITCH 176 

EXPRESSING  A  COLONIAL  GOVERNOR  FROM  LONDON     .       .       .189 

THE  SCHOOLMASTER  ABROAD 201 

JOLIET  AND  MARQUETTE  DOWN  THE  MISSISSIPPI  ....  216 

THE  "PETTICOAT  INSURRECTION"  IN  MOBILE  IN  1706     .       .  221 
THE  CHAMPIONSHIP  FOR  THE  AMERICAN  BELT     .       .       .       .227 

BRITANNIA  FORCES  TEA  ON  HER  TROUBLESOME  CHILD     .       .  236 

THE  SURPRISE  PARTY  TO  FORT  TICONDEROGA      ....  247 

WASHINGTON  REVIEWS  THE  TROOPS  AT  CAMBRIDGE        .       .  251 

A  PURITAN  BREAKFAST 259 

ENGLISH  POOR  RELATIONS  EATING  COLONISTS  OUT  OF  HOUSE  AND 

HOMB 276 

PUTNAM'S  HOME-STRETCH  DOWN  HORSE-NECK      ....  293 

NEW  YORK  EVACUATED,  NOVEMBER  25,  1783    ....  804 

THE  STATE  TAKES  LEAVE  OF  THE  COLONY 314 

THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  NEGRO 323 

THE  WHISKEY  REBELLION  IN  1794 338 

COURTSHIP  IN  THE  OLDEN  TIME 853 

SCHOOL-DAYS  IN  1769  AND  1869                                                     .  866 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS.  9 

THE  AMERICAN  Joss ...  872 

LOOKING  FOB  A  SCOUT 390 

THE  ROMANCE  OF  INDIAN  WAKFAKE 407 

ETERNAL  VIGILANCE  is  THE  PRICE  OF  LIBERTY  ....  421 

THE  PROGRESS  OF  FASHION 432 

A  MORMON  FAMILY  OUT  FOR  A  WALK  ......  451 

THE  SKEDADDLE  OF  JOHN  B.  FLOYD 461 

AN  INTELLIGENT  JURY 468 

COTTON  SUPREME 483 

THE  CORONER'S  INQUEST 500 

COTTON  DOWN 612 

MEMBERS  OF  CONGRESS  IN  A.  D.  1900 520 

THE  IRISH  REPUBLIC  IN  AMERICA       ......  529 

GETTING  MUDD  OUT  OF  THE  DRY  TORTUGAS        ....  533 

SCHOOL-TEACHING  FROM  1869  ONWARDS 542 

THE  AMERICAN  LAOCOON .       .547 

Tut  END 549 


CONTENTS. 


PREFATORY. 

PAGE 

TREATING  THE  READER  TO  AN  ACCOUNT  OF  THE 
AUTHOR,  AND  OF  THE  PLAN,  OBJECT,  AND  PRIN- 
CIPLES OF  THIS  HISTORY 41 

The  Author,  proposing  to  be  intimate  with  the  Reader,  deems 
an  Introduction  desirable.  —  Born  Early  and  Poor.  —  How  the 
Two  Facts  were  managed  and  overcome.  —  School  Days  and 
Nights.  —  College  Lines,  crooked  and  straight.  —  Father's 
Face  against  his.  —  A  New  American  Decalogue.  —  Into 
the  Married  and  other  States  and  Territories.  —  Settling 
down.  —  Advantages  of  a  Sub-urban  Residence.  —  Outside 
and  Inside  Views  of  the  Author's  Head.  —  Plans  and  Pur- 
poses of  the  Work.  —  Laughing  Facts.  —  Roman  Precedents. 
—  Impartiality  holding  the  Shears  and  Tape.  —  Sources  of 
our  Information.  —  Acknowledgments  to  Smith  and  Brown. 
Our  Illustrations. 


BOOK    FIRST. 

DISCOVERIES. 

B.  C.  TO  1607  A.  D. 

CHIP. 

I.     OF  AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY  IN  THE  FIF- 
TEENTH CENTURY.     B.  C.  TO  1000  A.  D.  .  .      55 
America   older  than  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa.  —  Chronic  Er- 
rors on  the  Subject.  —  Europe   presented   to   America.  — 
1* 


12  CONTENTS. 

Truth  vindicated.  —  Proofs  of  our  Superior  Antiquity. — 
Luxurious  Civilization  of  the  Races  which  stocked  this  Con- 
tinent before  the  Indians.  —  Amount  of  Coal  left  by  them 
unburned.  —  Large  Supplies  of  Fish  packed  away  safely  in 
our  Mountains.  —  Fish  Culture  measure  of  Human  Culture. 

—  Fossil  Cran-iology.  —  Laughable  Blunders  of  Former  His- 
torians   and    Ethnologists.  —  Ancient   Nations,   Babylonian, 
Persian,  Greek,  the  Ten  Lost  Tribes,  etc.,  trickling  through, 
have  reappeared  on  our  Side  of  the  Earth.  —  Instances  cited. 

—  Mythologies  of  Greece  and  Rome  originated  here.  —  Proofs 
and  Reproofs.  —  American  Nests  well  feathered  Ages  ago. 

H.  OF  THE  DISCOVERIES  IN  AMERICA  DURING  THE 
ELEVENTH,  FIFTEENTH,  SIXTEENTH,  AND  SEV- 
ENTEENTH CENTURIES.  1000  TO  1607  .  .  64 

America  not  discovered  by  Jason.  —  Lithographic  Specimens  at- 
tributed to  the  Northmen  in  the  Eleventh  Century  curious,  but 
~-executed  by  Skalds  more  Modern.  —  Bishop  Berkeley's  West- 
ern Star  not  the  First  American  Constellation.  —  Columbus 
offers  a  Continent  at  Private  Sale  ;  Isabella,  a  Spanish  Lady, 
takes  him  up,  and  the  Profits  also.  — A  Fish  Story  confirmed. — 
Of  Ferdinand's  Necklace.  —  Price  of  Eggs  advanced  in  Spain. 

—  England  finally  sees  something.  —  Discoveries  which  Co- 
lumbus did  not  make.  —  Ponce  de  Leon.  —  Mexico  unfortu- 
nately discovered.  —  The  Straits    of    Magellan   and   other 
Straits.  —  De  Soto  at  the  Bottom  of  the  Mississippi.  —  Cham- 
plain,  a  wise  man,  founds  Quebec  upon  a  Rock.  —  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  and  him  smoking.  —  The  Mayflower  anchored.  — 
Hudson  up  stream. 

m.  OF  THE  INDIAN  CHARACTER  ....  76 
Survey  of  Indian  Character  and  Lands. —Our  Pacific  Inten- 
tions towards  the  Indians.  —  The  Whites  better  read  than  the 
Red  Men,  and  the  Effects  of  Learning.  —  The  Pale  Complex- 
ion of  their  Affairs.  —  Wet  Blankets  thrown  over  their  other 
Habits.  —  Different  Traits  discovered  by  School-Girls  and 
through  Official  Spectacles.  —  Meaning  of  Indian  Reserva- 
tions. —  Indian  Style  of  Dress  and  its  Conveniences.  —  Indian 
Names.  —  Examples  of  their  Happy  Application. 


CONTENTS.  13 


BOOK    SECOND. 

SETTLEMENTS  AND   COLONIES. 
1607  -  1775. 

I.  OF  AMERICAN  SETTLEMENTS   GENERALLY    .          .       87 

Some  American  Grounds,  like  Coffee,  unsettled.  —  Some  Settle- 
ments pulled  up  by  the  Roots  ;  others  chilled  by  Fever  and 
Ague.  —  Moist  Soils  objected  to  except  by  Doctors.  —  Unex- 
pected Crops  of  Tomahawks  from  Wheat  sown.  —  Settlements 
in  America  because  of  impracticability  of  making  any  at 
Home  with  Creditors.  —  Wild  Oats  sown  between  34th  and 
38th  Parallels.  —  Frequent  Settlements  make  long  Friends.  — 
Settlements  of  Old  Tavern  Scores  in  Chalky  Districts.  —  Re- 
ligious Squalls  prostrate  some  Plantations.  —  Indian  Tem- 
pests uproot  others.  —  Growth  of  Virginia,  although  Queen 
Elizabeth  nfemme  sole.  —  Clergymen's  Settlements.  —  Brides 
unsettled.  —  Drake  around  the  World. 

II.  THE     SETTLEMENTS     OF     VIRGINIA,     DELAWARE, 

MARYLAND,  THE   CAROLINAS,  AND  GEORGIA  .       95 

Colored  Views  whitened.  —  Blue  Ridges  and  Black  Welts  in 
Virginia.  —  Virginia,  smothered  up  in  Infancy  by  Charters, 
survives  Royal  Nursing.  —  Her  Vigilance  against  her  Suitors. 

—  Cotton  introduced.  —  How  the  World  managed  previously. 

—  Charles  I.  and  his  numerous  Autographs.  —  Georgia  and 
Oglethorpe.  —  Charleston  set  up.  —  A   Point  on   Old  Point 
Comfort.  —  Tobacco  first  piped  about.  —  Unmarried  Girls  as 
Articles  of  Import.  —  Estimated  in,  if  not  by,  Pounds.  —  The 
Fancy  Constitution  of  John  Locke  for  North  Carolina.  —  Its 
own  Length  but  Short  Life.  —  South  Carolina  Rivers  do  not 
run  up.  —  Popular  Errors  corrected.  —  John  Wesley.  —  Sin- 
gular Effect  of  his  Preaching  on  the  Indians. —  Maryland  as 
a  Duck  of  a  Colony  canvassed. 

III.  JOHN  SMITH 106 

John  Smith  historically  considered.  —  The  Number  in  Leading 
Cities  stated.  —  How  classified.  — Why  he  is  not  put  in  a  sep- 
arate Volume  or  in  an  Appendix.  —  Origin  of  the  Smiths. 


14  CONTENTS. 

—  American  Genealogical  Trees.  —  Smiths  up  a  Stump,  in 
the  Sap,  and  dangling  from  the  Branches.  —  The  Antiquity 
and  Ubiquity  of  the  Smiths.  —  Variety  and  Extent  of  their 
Occupations  and  Operations.  —  Will  probably  in  time  own  all 
the  World.  —  Comic  Situations  of  John  Smiths  in  Cities,  at 
Family  Dinner-Parties,  at  Prayer-Meetings,  at  Balls,  in  Titles 
to  Real  Estate,  etc.  —  Whether  he  can  be  sued.  —  Other  Legal 
Questions  in  reference  to  him  considered. — John  Smith  of 
Pocahontas  Fame  a  Myth. 

IV.  OF    THE    SETTLEMENT    OF   THE    NEW   ENGLAND 

STATES 115 

Views  of  the  New  England  States  and  Character  determined  by 
one's  Church.  —  Partial  Notions  about  Clocks,  Nutmegs, 
Pumpkin  Pies,  etc. —  Getting  an  Historical  Coach  to  one's 
self.  —  Wrhy  the  Puritans  did  not  hang  up  their  Stockings 
on  their  first  Christmas  Eve.  —  Their  nearest  Neighbors.  — 
Indian  Points  and  other  Points.  —  Governor  Carver  and 
Want  of  Meats.  —  Massasoit,  and  how  he  kept  his  Faith 
in-violate.  —  New  Hampshire  on  the  Rampage.  —  Why  Boston 
was  begun,  and  why  it  is  not  finished.  —  Roger  Williams 
and  his  Providential  Ways  and  Dealings.  —  Connecticut 
founded,  although  its  Charter  not  found.  —  The  Wind  against 
Cromwell.  —  Harvard  College.  —  Vermont  and  her  Ways  and 
Means. 

V.  THE  SETTLEMENT   OF  NEW  YORK         .          .          .126 

The  Spirits  of  the  Age  present  at  its  Foundation.  —  Who  they 
were  and  how  they  were  affected.  —  The  Wonders  of  Man- 
hattan in  September,  1609.— How  the  Animal,  Vegetable, 
Ornithological,  Maritime,  and  Human  Productions  then  com- 
pared with  those  now.  —  WTiat  New  York  Lots  were  worth 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  —  Their  Owners.  —  Hud- 
son's Trip  up  the  River.  —  What  he  saw  and  did  n't  see.  — 
The  four  Dutch  Governors ;  their  Doings  and  Misdoings.  — 
Sketch  of  Holland  and  the  Characteristics  which  she  im- 
pressed upon  New  Amsterdam.  —  Bravery  evinced  in  settling 
Brooklyn.  —  How  the  Van  Rensellaers  and  other  Vans  were 
enticed  hither.  —  The  Troubles  and  Sorrows  of  Wouter  Van 
Twiller  and  William  Kieft.  —  Of  the  Surrender  of  the  Dutch, 
and  the  Instalment  of  English  Rule  in  New  York.  —  Petrus 
Stuyvesant  retires  from  Business.  —  His  Farm  and  what  he 
raised  on  it. 


CONTENTS.  15 

VI.     THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  NEW  JERSEY     .          .          .142 

A  spirited  Sketch  of  the  Way  in  which  it  was  done,  and  the 
Results. 

VH.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA    .    .143 

Governments  in  their  Action  like  Pianos.  —  The  Reason ;  and 
illustrating  Examples.  —  Varieties  in  the  Make-ups  of  the 
different  Settlers  of  the  Colonies.  —  Character  of  Penn,  and 
why  it  improves  by  Age.  —  His  Accomplishments.  —  His  first 
Visit  to  America  in  1681.— Tall  Talk  and  Peace.  —  Phila- 
delphia, its  Early  and  Late  Characteristics.  —  Delaware  sets 
rap  for  herself.  —  Penn  in  Prison.  —  Again  in  Pennsylvania.  — 
Returns  to  England  by  the  Philadelphia  Line.  —  Pennsyl- 
vania leaps  into  the  Eighteenth  Century,  and  what  she  does 
there. 

Vm.   THE  COLONIES  IN  THE  UPPER  HALF  OF  THE 

SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY  .  .  .  .150 
The  Young  Colonies  watched  by  the  "  Old  Folks  at  Home."  — 
Required  to  furnish  Inventories  of  their  Property.  —  Old  Peo- 
ple particular  as  to  Shops  where  the  Youngsters  traded. — 
Several  Articles  of  Political  Housekeeping,  as  Printing- 
Presses,  Jury-Boxes,  etc.,  not  allowed.  —  Some  Favorites 
among  the  Children.  —  The  first  American  Ring.  —  Crom- 
well as  a  Step- Father.  —  The  Atlantic  Swimming-Bath. — 
Political  Rights  jarred  off  the  Parent  Tree;  others  Fell  when 
Ripe.  —  Some  Proprietors  sell  out  to  raise  Money  for  Costs.  — 
General  Thaw  in  High  Places.  —  Legislative  Mills  with  two 
runs  of  Stone.  —  Woman's  Rights  in  Capsules.  —  How  hard 
Puritan  Wood  •  got  softer.  —  Episcopal  Race-Courses  en- 
larged. —  A  Black  Frost  curls  up  the  Green  Leaves  of  the 
Charters. — What  Sir  Edmund  Andros  swallowed  and  the 
Fit  of  Indigestion  which  followed. — Effect  of  European 
Housekeeping  in  setting  Colonial  Brooms  in  Motion.  —  New 
York  swept  into  the  English  Pan.  —  Result  of  James  II.'s 
over-stay  in  Paris.  —  Slaps  in  the  Face  of  Canada  and 
their  Return.  — How  Public  Events  tell  on  Family  Mat- 
ters tolled  long  and  loud.  —  People  occasionally  subject  to 
Scarlet  Fever  and  Fourth  of  July,  but  can't  live  on  either.  — 
Kidd  at  Sea ;  takes  off  a  few  People.  —  How  the  Deficiency 
was  supplied.  —  Number  of  Colonists  at  close  of  Seventeenth 

Century Would  have  been  more  had  Chicago  started.  — 

Colonial  Colts  at  the  Bars  of  the  eighteenth  Century. 


16  CONTENTS. 

IX.  WITCHCRAFT 169 

The  Witch-Caldron  at  Salem.  —  How  its  Bubbling  raised  Tea- 
Pot  Lids  and  has  kept  open  other  Lids  ever  since.  —  The 
Young  Female  Witches  at  Salem  condemned  to  the  Ties  of 
Matrimony;  the  Old  Ones  to  harder  Knots.  —  The  Sin  of 
being  Old  considered.  —  The  Scarlet  Letter.  —  Examples 
of  Witchcraft  cited.  —  The  Delusion  of  Adam  and  Eve  at  the 
first  Pomological  Convention  in  Eden.  —  Woman  as  Man's 
familiar  Spirit;  and  her  Conjuries.  —  Cases  of  David,  Sam- 
son, and  Herod.  —  Antony  dissolved  in  that  Egyptian  Drink 
Pearl  Water.  —  The  Maid  of  Orleans  and  what  an  Arc  she 
subtended.  —  The  Philters  of  Love,  Ambition,  Heroism,  etc., 
administered  to  Men  and  Nations.  —  Then-  Effects.  —  De- 
lusions, like  Measles,  catching.  —  The  Frenzies  of  Fashion 
fully  described.  —  The  Stock  Exchange.  —  Private  Witch- 
crafts at  Quiltings,  Apple-Parings,  etc.  — Red  Corn  and 
other  Red  Ears.  —  Sweet  Witches.  —  A  Jury  of  gushing 
Girls.  —  Punishment  of  Men  incapable  of  being  bewitched. 


OF  THE  MANNERS,  MORALS,  HABITS,  AND  LAWS 
OF  THE  COLONISTS  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY 177 

First-class  Telescope  to  see  the  MANNERS  of  a  Past  Age. — 
Difficulties  of  Near-sighted  and  Long-sighted  People.  —  Near 
Objects  more  embarrassing  to  the  Observer  than  Distant.  — 
Why?  —  The  Ghosts  of  the  Past.  —  The  Manners  and  Dress 
of  Stuyvesant,  Eliot,  Calvert,  Rolfe,  etc.  described.  —  Man- 
ners of  the  Mass  detailed;  in  their  Work,  Play,  Diet,  Court- 
ship, Fashions,  Treatment  of  Young  Ladies  and  Gentlemen, 
Children,  Servants,  etc.  —  Superior  Advantages  of  Pater- 
familias then  in  making  Acquaintance  with  his  \V  ife  and 
Children.  —  Fast  Girls  and  Calicoes.  —  The  Isothermal  Lines 
of  ETHICS.  —  Certain  Vices,  like  Eggs,  laid  secretly  and 
hatched  afterwards.  —  The  Fashions  of  Crime  at  various 
Epochs  compared.  —  Jails  and  Jail-Birds.  —  The  ingenious 
Crimes  of  Trade,  Corporations,  Schools,  and  Seminaries 
noted.  —  How  Sects  are  frozen  or  thawed  by  Tempera- 
ture. —  Northern  and  Southern  Sectarianism.  —  Why  Episco- 
pacy flourished  in  Warm  Latitudes.  —  The  early  Commer- 
cial Morality  of  New  York.  —  Baptists,  Congregationalists,  and 
Independents.  —  The  HABITS  of  the  Century;  their  Material, 
Color,  Durability,  and  Wear.  —  The  LAWS  mainly  imported.  — 


CONTENTS.  17 

What  a  Business  the  Colonists  carried  on,  notwithstanding, 
in  the  Domestic  Article.  —  Kindness  of  the  Proprietors  in 
furnishing  Beady-made  Office-holders  not  appreciated. — 
American  Itch  for  Law-making.  —  Laws  against  Criminals.  — 
Their  Crimson  Color.  —  How  the  Kains  of  Mercy  fell  on 
hard  Enactments,  and  the  Thaw  which  followed.  —  Coroners' 
Inquests  sat  upon.  —  Verdicts  under  various  Lights.  —  Jus- 
tices of  the  Peace,  and  the  Law  they  peddled.  —  Adminis- 
trations of  Law  then  and  now  contrasted.  —  How  Colors, 
although  imponderable,  turned  the  Judicial  Scales. 

XI.     THE    COLONIES    IN  THE   LOWER    HALF    OF    THE 

EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY  .          .          .  .194 

The  Colonial  Colts  in  the  large  open  Field  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century.  —  The  Effects  of  a  Sniff  of  French  Gunpowder.  — 
Queen  Anne's  War,  1702-1713  ;  its  Cost  and  Results  hi  Eu- 
rope and  America.  —  Acadia  changes  its  Name  to  Nova 
Scotia.  —  How  the  Colonies  started  a  Newspaper  in  1704.  — 
Philadelphia  in  a  Sheet  in  1719  ;  and  how  comfortable  it  was. 
—  The  Franklin  Bros,  furnish  Food  too  condensed  even  for 
Boston.  —  Benjamin  quits  the  Hub  ;  foots  it  without  tiring  to 
New  York.  —  How  he  got  through  New  Jersey  without  paying 
Toll.  —  Enters  Philadelphia  with  Two  Loaves,  and  sets  up  an 
Intellectual  Bakery.  —  Banks  built  on  the  Sands  of  Credit.  — 
Moving  Accidents.  —  John  Law's  Scheme  to  use  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley ;  how  it  grew  ;  what  it  promised,  and  how  it 
performed.  —  A  French  Pasquinade.  —  The  Results  of  a  Bank 
Panic  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  —  The  Effects  on  the 
Manufacture  of  Children.  —  Number  of  Colonists  in  1713  and 
1743.  —  The  Condition  of  Delaware,  New  Hampshire,  and 
Vermont.  —  The  Training  of  Young  America.  —  Yale  Col- 
lege and  its  Mustard-like  Growth.  —  The  American  Learned 
Oak. — The  Connection  between  Slate-Pencil  and  Gum  Chew- 
ing and  Female  Education.  —  What  took  Place  between  1713 
and  1743.  —  A  Negro  Plot  in  New  York.  —  Negroes  thrown 
overboard,  and  the  Bubbles  that  rose.  —  How  large  Historic 
Doors  swing  on  small  Hinges.  —  Examples  from  A  to  W.  — 
What  happened  because  Maria  Theresa  was  a  Female.  — The 
English  Georges  ;  what  Bulls  they  were,  and  made.  —  The 
Transatlantic  Bullocks,  and  how  they  rushed  into  King 
George's  War  in  1744,  and  what  Mischief  they  did  for  Four 
Years. 


18  CONTENTS. 


XH.     THE  CHAMPIONSHIP  FOB  THE  AMERICAN  BELT. 

1754  TO  1763 208 

No  Hopes  for  the  Millennium  in  American  Colonies  up  to  1754. 

—  More  Swords  than  Ploughshares.  —  Mars  in  America.  — 
Sixteen  Indian  Wars  in  147  Years.  —  How  they  were  fed  by 
French  Oil  and  blown  by  French  Bellows.  —  The  Five  Great 
Continental  Wars,  and  how  they  reached  over  and  handled 
the  Colonies.  —  The  Treaty  Patches,  and  how  they  failed  to 
cover  the  War  Breaches.  —  The  Volcanic  Character  of  Ameri- 
can Soil.  —  How  the  Animosities  of  France  and  England 
grew  through  Four  Centuries,  and  in  what  a  Hateful  Harvest 
they  waved,  in  1754,  each  Side  the  Sea.  —  Celebrated  Fights 
between  the  Rivals  in  Europe.  —  How  Commercial  Competi- 
tion rubbed  in  Salt  Water,  and  Religious  Differences  Brim- 
stone, into  the  Wounds.  —  Memorable  Cases  of  Battle  Surg- 
ery. —  The  Relative  Merits  of  English  and  French  Claims  to 
America  fully  stated.  —  Deeds  of  Land  and  of  Arms  clash.  — 
French  Jesuits  with  Crosses  and  Traders  with  Skins  encom- 
pass the  English  Plantations  from  Maine  to  Minnesota,  and 
thence  to  Alabama  and  Texas.  —  Marquette,  Joliet,  La  Salle, 
Lallemand,  and  others.  —  The  Former  escaped  the  Fast  Life  of 
Chicago,  and  La  Salle  the  Hazards  of  Natchez.  —  France  seeks 
to  fasten  a  Remarkable  Rosary  around  the  Neck  of  Young 
America  ;  England  to  cut  it.  —  Suitors  to  the  same  Maiden, 
they  suited  not  her  nor  each  other.  —  Their  soft  Ways  to  her. 

—  Their  Hardness  to  each  other.  —  Their  Long  Quarrels  over 
her  Person  and  Purse  result  at  last  in  a  Decisive  Fight.  — 
The  Championship  for  the  American  Belt  —  The  Champions, 
the  Belt,  and  the  Ring  described.  —  How  John  Bull  and  Jean 
Crapean  stepped  into  the  Latter.  —  The  Nine  Rounds  from 
1754  to  1763.  —  How  Mr.  Bull  won  ;  what  he  said,  and  how 
Monsieur  Crapeau  behaved.  —  A  Suitor  pleased,  and  a  Suitor 
non-suited. 

CAUSES  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION          .    229 

The  People  as  Yeast —  The  Fermentation.  — Washington,  Sam- 
uel Adams,  Patrick  Henry,  Rutledge,  Franklin,  Otis,  and  oth- 
ers, and  tbeir  Value  in  the  Colonial  Fermenting  Pots.  —  State 
Courtships  in  1754-1766  and  1774,  tend  to  a  more  Perfect 
Union.  —  How  Home  Confidences  operate.  —  What  Effect  the 
English  Navigation  Acts  had  on  American  Swimmers. — 
Lord  North  and  Charles  Townshend.  —  Colonial  Assemblies 
and  Country  Dances.  —  Dislike  of  Impositions.  —  That  small 


CONTENTS.  19 

Boston  Tea-Party.  —  The  large  Amount  of  Atlantic  Water 
between  the  Tea  Seller  and  Tea  Purchaser.  —  When  Tea 
can't  be  sweetened.  —  Be-cause  as  a  Cause. 


BOOK    THIED. 

THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

THE  FIRST  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL. 

GRIEVANCES  ;  THE  PREPARATION  ;  THE  START.    235 

The  Hard  Lot  of  the  Colonists,  and  what  they  got  from  it.  — 
Colonial  Governors,  like  Old  Topers  at  a  Free  Opening  of  a 
Tavern.  —  The  Miseries  of  a  Visit  from  Relatives  poor  and 
proud.  —  How,  like  poor  Fowls,  the  Navigation  Acts  laid 
many  bad  Eggs. — Examples  cited.  —  Parliamentary  Laws 
ingeniously  floored  and  roofed.  —  English  Strabismus,  or 
Squint-eyedness,  sought  to  be  made  fashionable  in  the  Colo- 
nies. —  Success  in  Canada.  —  English  Tubs  to  catch  Revenue 
off  American  Slopes.  —  Manufacture  of  Hats  prohibited  ;  how 
and  where  the  Fur  flew.  —  What  a  Cute  Yankee  saw  from 
the  Top  of  the  American  Roof.  —  How  Four  Yards  are  worth 
more  than  Five.  —  Bull-yism  defined,  and  its  Laws  stated.  — 
The  First  Bill  to  raise  Revenue  ;  the  large  Bird  behind  it 
described.  —  Sent  over  to  America,  it  was  foul-ly  treated.  — 
Molasses  denied  to  Colonists.  —  Effects  on  Yankee  Appetites 
and  on  the  Increase  of  Straws  in  Custom-House  Casks.  — 
Stamps  and  Stampedes.  —  The  Act  repealed  ;  the  Sting  left 
in.  — Another  Bill  and  larger  Bird  behind  it  in  1767.  —  The 
First  Blood.  —  The  Wheel  starts  ;  its  Hub,  Spokes,  and  Pe- 
riphery. —  English  Bees  swarm  over  and  settle  in  Boston  and 
other  tender  Parts.  —  The  Dis-cord-ant  Sounds  at  Concord.  — 
George  Washington  ;  his  Appearance  and  Costume,  and  what 
befell  him,  June,  1775.  —  Gage  falls  from  a  Tree.  —  Why  and 
Howe  ?  —  Washington  seizes  Boston  Neck.  —  The  Spasms.  — 
Bunker  Hill  gets  a  Scar  and  afterwards  an  Ugly  Monumental 
Patch.  —  The  Boone  Colonists  in  Kentucky.  —  How  they 
blazed  a-way  thither  from  Virginia.  —  Washington  at  Cam- 
bridge. —  Unseasoned  Troops  seasoned.  —  General  Montgom- 
ery earns  Laurels  at  Quebec  mixed  with  Cypress.  —  The 
Revolutionary  Wheel  throws  off  Dusty  Colonial  Governors. 
—  How  Washington  broke  up  the  Hessian  Swarm  at  Boston, 

B 


20  CONTENTS. 

and  Howe  they  flew  to  Halifax.  —  Washington  attends  a  Lec- 
ture in  Boston.  —  General  Lee's  Neck-and-Neck  Race  with 
Sir  Henry  Clinton  for  New  York  ;  Lee  ahead  120  Minutes. 
Sir  Henry  and  a  Party  of  Jolly  Dogs  alight  near  Charleston, 
and  how  the  Waspish  Lee  lit  upon  and  stung  them.  —  Where 
the  Jolly  Dogs  then  went.  —  The  Wheel  well  started. 

H.  JULY  FOURTH  1776  AND  SO  FORTH  .  .  .257 
Review  of  our  Historical  Journey  from  the  Start  up  to  the  Sum- 
mit of  the  4th  of  July.  —  Resumt  of  our  Tramp  through  Pre- 
Columbian  and  Post-Columbian  Times.  — Our  March  from 
St.  Augustine,  via  Jamestown  and  the  Manhattan  Cabins,  to 
the  Temperance  Tavern  at  Plymouth.  —  Descriptions  of  In- 
dian Interruptions.  —  Polite  Interference  of  Gallic  Gentlemen 
at  Narrow  Parts  of  the  Road  in  1689,  1710,  1745,  etc.  —  Ban- 
ditti on  the  Highways  of  History,  English,  French,  and 
Dutch.  —  Blazing  Description  of  the  Summit,  the  Flagstaff, 
Flag,  and  Eagle.  — The  Grand  Political  Pic-Nic  there  of 
Fifty-one  Wise  Men.  —  The  Thunder  Storms  around  them  ; 
and  their  Behavior.  —  General  Account  of  this  Group  ;  and 
how  remarkable  and  marked.  —  Special  Portraitures  of 
Thirteen  of  them.  —  Some  Peculiar  Heads  there,  and  how 
much  George  III.  wanted  them.  —  Prayer  of  John  Adams.  — 
A  Great  Freshet  of  a  Speech  and  what  it  carried  off.  —  A  Re- 
markable Declaration  made  by  Jefferson.  —  An  Electrical 
Battery  charged  and  discharged.  —  The  Peppering  George 
HI.  got.  —  How  he  worked  Seven  Years  against  the  Declara- 
tion.—  The  Gun-powdery  Effect  of  the  first  Fourth,  and  the 
Fire-Crackers  since  touched  off  by  it.  —  Independence  origi- 
nally handled  without  Gloves  ;  now  by  Aldermen  and  very 
Common  Councilmen  with  a  half-dozen  pair  apiece.  —  The 
Fourths  up  to  1850.  —  Tar  Barrel  Eloquence.  —  Military  and 
Civic  Renown  snatched  on  that  day.  —  What  Eggs,  contain- 
ing Addling  Heroes,  pip  on  that  Day.  —  How  Swords  embar- 
rass Crooked  Legs.  —  Militia  Lines,  and  what  Snarls  they  get 
into.  —  Dissolving  Bursts  of  Golden  Glories.  —  Effects  of  Sul- 
phtir  administered  to  a  Rural  Population.  —  Cakes  of  Ginger- 
bread, and  how  they  stuck  in  the  Teeth,  Stomach,  and  Mem- 
ory. —  Lamentations  over  the  Decay  of  the  Old-tune  Fourths. 


CONTENTS.  21 

SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL  ; 
ITS  ECCENTRIC  BUT  ONWARD  MOVEMENTS. 
1776-1780 277 

English  Hawks  gather  around  New  York. — Washington  watches 
them.  —  About  an  Esquire.  —  The  Way  the  Germans  took 
Brooklyn  the  first  Time.  —  How  they  returned,  not  to  their 
Mutton,  but  to  Kalbfleisch.  —  Difficulty  of  reaching  New 
York  from  Brooklyn  in  1776.  —  Washington  takes  a  Trip  to 
Harlem.  —  The  British  also.  —  Red  Eyes  and  Disfigured  Faces 
the  Consequence.  —  Lord  Howe  attempts  to  get  around  the 
American  Squire.  —  The  slight  Unpleasantness  at  White 
Plains.  —  The  different  Uses  of  the  Croton  Water  in  1776  and 
now.  —  The  Amount  of  Whiskey  it  took  in  1869  to  qualify  the 
Water  in  New  York.  —  Washington  ventures  into  New  Jersey. 

—  Set-to  at  Fort  Lee.  —  Washington  across  Rivers.  —  Phila- 
delphia covered.  —  Homesickness   of  Agricultural  Lads.  — 
What  befell  Lee  at  a  Tavern.  —  Washington  crosses  the  Dela- 
ware and  drops  Christmas  Presents  into  German  Stockings. 

—  The  Effects  of  Yankee  Doodle  on  Lafayette,  De  Kalb,  Kos- 
ciusko,  Pulaski,  and  others.  —  Friends  of  America  in  Eng- 
land, Fox,  Hume,  etc.  —  Friends  of  England  in  America.  — 
The  Statue  and  Statutes  of  George  III.  repealed.  —  Battle  of 
Princeton.  —  The  Germans  obtain  Cider  and  Sausages  at 
Danbury.  —  Colonel  Meigs  tickles  the  Feet  of  ^>ng  Island, 
and  makes  Congress  laugh.  —  Colonel  Prescott  is  obliged  to 
rise  very  early  one  Morning  at  Newport.  —  Silas  Deane  and 
B.  Franklin  in  France.  —  What  followed.  —  Burgoyne  tries 
to  find  a  back-stair  Passage  to  New  York.  —  Strong  Gates  in 
his  Way  near  Saratoga.  —  Still-Water  runs  deep.  —  Brandy- 
Wine  an  unpalatable  Drink.  —  French  Treaty  with  America 
in  1778.  —  The  Wheel  moves  in  Water  and  turns  out  French 
Names. —  Crossing  New  Jersey.   Lord  Howe  collides  with 
Washington  at  Monmouth.  —  Count  d'Estaing  is  prevented 
by  an  Injunction  off  the  New  York  Bar  from  entering  New 
York.  —  Coquetting,  but  no  Engagement,  near  Newport.  — 
Buzzard's  Bay  and  its  Roosts.  —  Little  Egg  Harbor  and  its 
Nests,  and  what  was  laid  there.  —  The  Benefits  of  the  Wyo- 
ming Massacre.  —  Guerilla  War  at  the  South.  —  Savannah 
trounced.  —  Horse  Neck  and  Putnam's  Home-Stretch  down 
it.  —  Count  d'Estaing's  Yachting.  —  Spain  hankers  for  Gib- 
raltar.—  England  as  a  Pawn-Broker.  —  Paul  Jones  and  his 
Whip. 


22  CONTENTS. 

IV.  THE      LAST    TURN     OF     THE     REVOLUTIONARY 

WHEEL ;     ACCELERATIONS  ;     BLOWINGS  ;    THE 
GRIST.     1780-1783 296 

The  different  Opening  of  1780  for  those  who  poshed  and  those 
who  obstructed  the  Revolutionary  WheeL  —  The  Strain  on 
both  Sides.  —  Hard  Spring  in  Charleston  hi  consequence  of 
Leaden  Hail-Storms.  —  How  these  Storms  spread;  and  how 
the  Crops  were  saved  from  Ruin  by  Marion,  Surnter,  and 
Pickens.  —  The  Carolina  Game  Cock,  and  his  sharp  Spurs  in 
the  Sides  of  Cornwallis  and  Tarleton.  —  Gates  broken  down, 
and  the  Presidency  lost  at  Camden.  —  Greene  set  up  in  his 
Place,  proving  a  good  standing  Color.  —  The  Village  of  St. 
Louis  assailed.  —  Andr£  humiliates  himself,  and  is  Ex- 
alted.—  Arnold  gets  $50,000,  a  Brigadier's  Commission, 
and  is  elected  by  General  Contempt  into  the  Order  of  Judas 
Iscariot.  —  New-Year's  Day  among  the  Pennsylvania  Troops 
at  Morristown.  —  The  United  States  Treasury,  made  less 
Celestial,  becomes  Defiled  by  filthy  Lucre.  —  The  Goring 
and  Tossing  of  Tarleton  by  Morgan  at  the  Cow-Pens.  —  An 
Irish-like  Fight  at  Eutaw  Springs.  —  Southern  Hunters 
around  the  British  Flock  at  Charleston  and  Savannah. — 
The  troublesome  Seizure  of  Virginia  Assemblymen.  —  How 
the  Captors  missed  burning  their  Fingers  with  Jefferson's 
red  Hair.  —  Cornwallis  enmeshed  at  Yorktown.  —  What 
Lord  North  said.  —  What  the  English  George  threatened  and 
what  the  American  George  did.  —  "  Let  there  be  Peace  " ; 
and  Peace  was.  —  What  England  lost  and  America  gained 
—  The  kind  of  Grist  obtained. 

V.  HOW  A  POOR  CONSTITUTION  BROKE  DOWN  .          .     300^ 
Every  Community  has  its  Axis  of  Growth.  —  That  of  the  Con- 
federation described.  —  Causes  of  the  Distrust  of  Federated 
Power.  —  How  the  States  preferred  to  sew  up  the  Treasury 
Pocket  rather  than  allow  their  own  Agents  to  put  their  Hands 

in  it  for  necessary  Funds.  —  Facetious  Bills  of  Exchange.  — 
The  Shady  and  s'unny  Side  of  Power.  —  Similarities  and  Dis- 
similarities of  the  States.  —  The  Committee  to  draft  Confed- 
eration Sixteen  Months  over  the  Cold  Nest  —  The  curious 
Knot-ty  Grub  that  issued.  — The  Spawn  of  Doubt  put  to  the 
Nurse  of  Jealousy.  —  How  it  was  nursed,  starved,  and  doc- 
tored; and  what  a  poor  Constitution  it  got.  The  Confed- 
erate Scheme  like  a  Pine  Board.  —  It  could  not  raise  Money, 
An  Army,  Credit,  Postage,  Revenue  :  in  fact,  could  nat 


CONTENTS.  23 

raise  itself.  —  The  Comic  Side  of  the  Franking  Privilege.  — 
A  desirable  Prohibition.  —  How  the  Grub  became  a  Cater- 
pillar, and  the  Caterpillar  a  Butterfly.  —  A  very  Larky 
Phoenix  rises,  crowing  Yankee  Doodle. 


BOOK    FOURTH. 

THE  UNITED   STATES. 

I.      THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION.      1777-1787..          .     313 

The  Constitution  as  a  Resort  for  Shoppers  in  Civil  Rights. — 
Every  kind  of  Article  to  be  found  either  for  Ordinary  or  Ex- 
ceptional Use.  —  The  Fringe  called  Preamble ;  its  Thread, 
Texture,  and  Quality.  —  Counterfeit  Patterns  and  Simula- 
tions easily  detected.  —  Piles  of  heavy  Cloths  for  the  Coun- 
try's Winter  Use  in  War,  Financial  Storms,  etc.  —  Ex- 
ecutive and  Legislative  Ready-made  Clothing.  —  Judicial 
White  Goods.  —  Hosiery  for  Congressional  Understandings, 
swift  or  slow.  —  A  variety  of  Miscellaneous  Wares;  Con- 
trivances for  catching  People  with  Colored  Skins;  Habeas- 
Corpus  Non-Suspenders ;  Muzzles  for  violent  or  hungry  Con- 
gressmen; Handsome  Checks  on  the  Treasury;  Specimens  of 
tender  Gold  and  Silver;  Militia  Uniforms;  Padlocks  for  se- 
curing Houses  against  Searches;  Jury-Boxes,  Trial  Bal- 
ances, and  other  Goods.  —  The  Sumner  Patent.  —  The  latest 
Novelty  to  prevent  Electoral  Black-and-White  Suits  from 
being  stripped  off.  —  State-Rights  Dresses,  and  strong  Fed- 
eral Out-Fits.  —  Messrs.  Calhoun,  J.  Davis,  Webster,  Clay,  etc. 
The  Manufacture  of  bright  Buttons,  called  "Coins."  —  The 
Fifteenth  Amendment.  —  Doubtful  Packages.  —  Paper  Money 
as  a  Substitute  for  real  Money.  —  Unauthorized  Use  of  the 
Constitutional  Bazaar.  —  Seekers  of  Goods  never  made.  — 
Nicholas  Biddle  and  his  Gold  Suit.  —  Everybody  suited  at  the 
Federal  Store.  —  Of  excessively  sharp  and  dense-headed 
Shoppers.  —  How  Articles  are  mistaken.  — Water-proof  Goods 
for  River  and  Harbor  Dredging  and  for  Lighting  Coasts.  — 
Of  long  Selvedges,  or  Railroad  Strips,  and  their  wonderful 
Elasticity.  —  Rights  and  Lefts. 


24  CONTENTS. 

n.      CONSTRUCTION;  OR,  WASHINGTON'S  ADMINISTRA- 
TION.     1789-1797 324 

How  the  Thirteen  Colonial  Children  crept  into  their  New 
Bed.  —  The  Upholstering  described.  —  Why  Rhode  Island 
was  last  in.  —  Who  tucked  her  up.  —  Washington  as  Superin- 
tendent, and  John  Adams  as  First  Assistant.  —  The  Family 
low  in  Credit.  —  Amount  of  their  Indebtedness  compared 
with  ours.  —  Washington's  Inaugural.  —  His  Exemption 
from  Office  Beggars,  Committees,  Pugilistic  M.  C.s,  bor- 
ing Place-Seekers,  enterprising  Donors,  etc.  —  Washington 
as  a  Spirit.  —  His  Capacity  to  select  a  Cabinet.  —  Who  they 
were.  —  Of  Henry  Knox.  —  The  Chief  Justice  and  Attorney- 
General.  —  Amendments  to  a  perfect  Constitution.  —  The 
Supreme  Court  as  a  sound,  seaworthy  Tribunal. —  Why 
States  cannot  be  sued  by  Individuals.  —  How  Governments 
get  around  paying  Interest  on  Principle.  —  Streaks  of  the 
Millennium.  —  Of  the  Public  Debt.  —  Discrimination  among 
Creditors.  —  Misfortune  of  being  a  Cisatlantic  Holder  of 
American  Bonds.  —  Alexander  Hamilton's  Notions.  —  Wash- 
ington's Receptions  and  Dinner-Parties.  —  The  Political 
Color  of  the  President's  Silver  Spoons  and  Window  Cur- 
tains.—  The  Honeymoon  of  the  new  Government  dis- 
turbed. —  Ganderous  Long-bills  splash  Washington.  —  The 
French  Revolution  and  its  Conundrums.  —  How  answered  by 
Washington  and  the  Federals;  how  by  Jefferson  and  the 
Anti-Federals.  —  The  Census  Act  procures  Names  without 
Owners. —  The  Naturalization  Laws  and  their  Pat-riot  pro- 
ducts.—  Polls  and  Polling-Places.  —  A  Sinking  Fund  that 
did  not  sink.  —  How  Vermont  made  the  Thirteen  States 
old.  —  An  Indian  War.  —  Cincinnati  begins.  —  Kentucky 
starts.  —  Mistakes  about  Bourbon.  —  Washington's  second 
Term.  —  What  Genet  did,  and  how  he  was  done  for.  —  Help- 
ful Americans.  —  The  Whiskey  Rebellion  of  1794.  —  The 
Year  of  Treaties;  how  they  enlarged  while  they  tied  us. — 
Tennessee  the  Sixteenth  State.  —  Nashville  gets  warm.  — 
Washington's  Farewell,  and  its  cheap  Imitations.  —  The 
Shades  of  Office.  —  Who  crept  in  and  who  stepped  into  the 
Sunshine. 

III.      OLD  FAMILY  PORTRAITS 340 

Modern  Photographic  Albums  like  Ancient  Roman  Simulacra.  — 
The  Pleasure  of  looking  at  the  Likenesses  of  Friends.  —  The 
Portraits  of  our  Fore-Fathers.  —  Our  dear  old  Great-Grand- 


CONTENTS.  25 

father  GEORGE  WASHINGTON.  —  His  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
eight  original  Portraits.  —  His  unique  Character;  of  the  same 
Size  all  the  Way  up.  —  His  Manners  and  Characteristics.  — 
How  the  Eighteenth  Century,  so  long  mated,  refused  to  sur- 
vive him.  —  Our  Great-Grand  and  good  Mother  MARTHA 
WASHINGTON.  —  The  Resemblance  between  her  and  a  Bowl 
of  ripe  Strawberries  and  Cream.  —  Her  Pride.  —  What  Quali- 
ties were  corseted  in  her  Bosom.  —  Our  favorite  Uncle,  BEN- 
JAMIN FRANKLIN.  —  How  the  Sky  got  into  his  Face  and  how 
it  stays  charged.  —  Looks  like  an  hereditary  Director  of  all 
the  Estates.  —  A  born  Trustee.  —  What  an  Idea  Burns  might 
have  got  of  him  in  1774,  and  how  expressed  it.  —  Of  our 
Aunt,  MRS.  JAMES  MADISON;  and  what  a  fine  Lady  she 
was.  —  Her  careful  Dress  and  Manners.  —  Impressive  but 
patronizing.  —  How  Time  forgot  her,  and  the  Years  ran  on 
un-notched.  —  The  forty  Years  she  acted  as-  Presidentess.  — 
PATRICK  HENRY  described  in  Dress,  Person,  shooting  Game, 
and  taking  Audiences.  —  Our  dear  Visitor,  GENERAL  LA- 
FAYETTE; his  Difficulties  in  reaching  us;  his  noble  Bride; 
his  Embarkation  at  a  Spanish  Port;  his  Labors  here;  his 
two  subsequent  Visits,  and  how  he  survived  Hand-shaking 
and  Kissing.  —  About  JOHN  JAY  and  his  Wife  SALLIE 
LIVINGSTON.  —  How  they  lived  and  what  he  became.  — 
Glances  at  ISRAEL  PUTNAM  and  his  expressive  Face;  at 
NATHANIEL  GREENE  and  his  square,  Quaker  Character;  at 
the  Telescopic  Eyes  of  FRANCIS  MARION,  with  a  Dash  at  his 
soldierly  Qualities.  —  The  Effigies  of  the  WISE  MEN.  —  Gen- 
eral Sketches  of  our  Heroes  and  Heroines.  —  A  Heart  Delinea- 
tion of  the  Mothers,  Wives,  and  Sisters  of  the  Men  of  the 
Revolution. 


IV.     THE  STRUGGLE  AND  FALL  OF  FEDERALISM;  OR, 

JOHN  ADAMS'S  ADMINISTRATION.     1797-1801.      354 

The  Pre-Adamite  Epoch:  its  Upheavals  and  Disruptions  in 
America,  and  the  red-hot  diplomatic  Stones,  Fauchet  and 
Adet,  ejected  from  France  upon  us.  —  The  new  French 
Acrostics;  and  the  Attempts  by  our  Commissioners  and 
Congress  to  solve  them.  —  Gold-mounted  Spectacles,  offered 
us  by  France;  and  our  Inability  to  see  our  Interest  or  Duty 
through  them.  —  Why  and  when  the  Keel  of  the  American 
Navy  was  laid.  —  Of  the  Alien  and  Sedition  Laws;  why 
passed  and  how  passed  by.  —  General  Washington  and  the 
Gallic  Cock;  a  Crow  never  crowed  out. — Napoleon's  Tour 
2 


26  CONTENTS. 

in  Egypt  and  Palestine  described;  and  its  Results  on  the 
Treaty  of  Peace  deduced.  —  Of  the  Office  and  Offices  of 
Consul. — A  Review  and  new  View  of  our  Difficulties  with 
France  from  1790  to  1800.—  What  a  Pitt  England  fell  into.— 
The  City  of  Washington  as  a  Geographical  Study.  —  About 
Mississippi,  Alabama,  and  the  French  Growth  of  Mobile. — 
The  Territorial  Condition  illustrated.  —  The  Introduction  of 
Vaccine  and  other  Virtu.  —  Why  some  Things  first  break  out 
in  Boston.  —  State  of  Parties  in  1801.  —  Why  the  first  Adams 
was  banished  from  the  Presidential  Eden ;  and  the  Flaming 
Swords  which  prevented  his  Return. 

V.     THE   CHIEF     AMERICAN     PRODUCTIONS    OF    THE 

EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 360 

The  Cereals  and  Serials  of  the  last  Century.  —  Hares  caught  be- 
fore cooked.  —  Useless  Indians  put  under  Ground.  —  Human 
Bones  the  Phosphates  of  History.  —  The  Statecraft  of  Wash- 
ington, Jefferson,  and  Others.  —  The  Automatic  Workings 
of  Governments  exposed.  —  What  small  Brains  rule.  —  De- 
scription of  our  Government  Machine.  —  Its  Merits  and  De- 
merits. —  The  Disadvantages  of  frequent  Changes  of  official 
Workmen.  —  How  the  Machine-Oil  is  stolen. —  The  Inven- 
tions of  the  Eighteenth  Cycle  of  Time.  —  An  American 
Noah  inebriated  by  the  Cotton-Gin.  —  How  Ham  laughed 
and  how  Japhet  put  a  Blanket  over  the  Patriarch.  —  The 
Growth  of  Commerce.  —  The  Notions  which  Importations  put 
in  and  on  the  Heads  of  the  Young  People.  —  Paris  supplies 
the  Mistakes  of  Nature.  —  Of  Dress.  —  Hoops,  Head-Gear, 
Coats,  Vests,  Tights,  etc.,  descanted  upon.  —  Improvements 
in  Roads  and  Means  of  Transit.  —  The  Journey  from  New 
York  to  Boston  in  1732. —  The  Road-Maker  and  Vehicle- 
Propeller  as  Leaders  of  Civilization.  —  The  great  Invention 
now  needed.  —  The  Populations  of  New  York  and  Boston  in 
1700.  —  Description  of  the  Former  in  that  Year  by  an  English 
Traveller.  —  Slave-Market  in  New  York  in  1711.  —  Manufac- 
tures and  their  Growth.  —  The  Habits  of  the  Period  de- 
scribed. —  Improvements  in  Morals,  and  wherein.  —  A  gen- 
eral Review  of  American  Literature  and  Book-Making  through 
the  Century.  —  The  first  American  printed  Volume ;  and  how 
fast  and  long  it  ran.  —  Earliest  Original  Book  of  Poems  ;  by 
a  Woman,  with  a  touching  Specimen  therefrom.  —  An  Ac- 
count of  the  leading  Writers  on  Theology,  Political  Science, 
Government,  Natural  Science,  Natural  History,  of  Novels, 
etc.—  The  American  Joss;  its  Worshippers,  and  their  Treat- 
ment. 


CONTENTS.  27 

VI.  DEMOCRACY    IN    POWER;    OR,    JEFFERSON'S    AD- 

MINISTRATION.     1801-1809 373 

Few  Removals  by  Mr.  Jefferson  from  the  Ungilt  Official 
Chairs.  —  Mr.  Smith  gets  into  the  Navy.  —  Who  started  long 
Messages  to  Congress;  and  the  Difficulty  of  finding  an  End  to 
them.  —  War  with  Tripoli;  and  the  Complexion  with  which 
the  Bey  ended  it.  —  Decatur  and  his  Mediterranean  Travels. 
—Ohio  in  1802.  —  The  early  Danger  it  ran  of  being  all  cut  up 
into  City  Lots  —  How  the  Exodus  of  its  Population  was  the 
Genesis  of  its  Growth.  —  Of  Westering  Caravans.  —  Bona- 
parte sells  Louisiana,  and  what  a  Sell  it  was.  —  How  we 
were  saved  an  extra  Volume  of  Supreme  Court  Decisions.  — 
The  Murder  of  Alexander  Hamilton.  — A  Ghost-Story  about 
Aaron  Burr. — The  public  Estimate  of  his  Character  un- 
changed by  Biographical  varnishing.  —  A  South  Carolina 
Conceit.  —  The  Play  of  Lear  in  Tripoli.  —  Peculiar  Mussul- 
man Habits;  the  Author  of  Don  Quixote.  —  Michigan  escapes 
the  Cuppings  of  Eastern  States. —  Her  lymphatic  Tempera- 
ment. —  Lake  Michigan  as  a  Breakwater  against  Chicago.  — 
Burr  tried  for  Treason,  "  not  proven  "  guilty,  and  surrendered 

—  to  himself.  —  Of  Bonaparte  and  other  Usurpers.  —  The 
Oldest  dislike  the  Youngest. —  History  of  the  Attempts  of 
George  III.   and   Bonaparte  to  blockade  without  Ships.  — 
Once  a  Bull  always  a  Bull.  —  Search  of  American  Ships  for 
Seamen.  —  The  Unwisdom  of  Half-apologies.  —  The  Ameri- 
can Embargo  and  its  Popularity  with  Unmarried  Girls. 

VII.  THE  UNITED    STATES    AT    SEA;   OR,    MADISON'S 

CRUISE.      1809-1817 382 

The  Captain  and  Officers  of  the  "  Seventeen  Sisters  "  which  put 
to  Sea  in  a  Gale.  —  Diplomatic  Talks.  —  Difference  between 
one's  own  Cows  gored,  and  one's  own  Bull  in  a  Neighbor's 
Field  stoned,  exemplified.  —  Cave  canem.  —  Bonaparte  im- 
proves the  Code  Napoleon.  —  Executions  before  Trials. — 
Horace  Greeley  fights  benevolently  into  the  World.  —  Louisi- 
ana and  her  Vivacious  Debts  taken  in ;  what  sweetened  them. 

—  Witch-Hazel  Rods  of  Clay,  Cheves,  etc.,  dip  to  the  National 
Mines  of  Feeling.  —  Our  Second  Wrestling-Match  with  Eng- 
land. —  The  Hull-sale  Surrender  of  Michigan.  —  Colonel  Cass 
breaks  his  Sword,  and  gets  an  Anglo-phobia.  —  Better  Hulls 
on  the  Water.  —  America  marries  the  Sea.  —  A  Wasp  on  a 
Frolic.  —  Marine  Flirtations  and  Engagements.  —  The  Consti- 
tution, an  Old  Sea-Flirt  ;  her  rapid  Winning  and  Wooing  of 


28  CONTENTS. 

the  Java.  —  South  Carolina  loses  a  Presidential  Candidate.  — 
Of  the  Three  Armies  afield.  —  Harrison  at  Tippecanoe  and 
the  Thames.  —  Colonel  R.  M.  Johnson's  life-long  Chase  for 
Tecumseh's  Scalp.  —  Toronto  emptied  and  filled.  —  General 
Brown,  a  Real  Man,  in  Spite  of  his  Name.  —  General  Wade 
Hampton.  —  Court-Martials,  and  how  they  touch  off  Military 
Charges.  —  The  United  States  at  Sea  on  Land.  —  The  Hornet 
on  a  Peacock.  —  An  Immortal  Word  wrung  from  a  Mortal 
Moment  —  Commodore  Perry.  —  General  Scott  improves  the 
Niagara  Frontier  for  Hack-Drivers.  —  Macdonough  charges 
Lake  Champlain  with  Heroic  Ingredients.  —  English  Marine 
Parades.  —  Cotton  Breastworks  at  New  Orleans.  —  Their 
Feminine  Adoption.  —  The  Treaty  of  Peace  and  its  Wonder- 
ful Omissions.  —  Costs  and  Gains  of  the  War.  —  The  Hartford 
Convention  and  its  Equestrian  Exploits.  —  Mr.  Calhoun  and 
Invisible  Ink. 

VIII.  THE  ERA  OF  GOOD-WILL  ;  OR,  MONROE'S  NEST- 

ING.    1817  -  1825. 396 

Why  Byron  did  not  write  sometimes.  —  Application.  —  Rain- 
bow after  the  Shower.  —  The  Happy  Family.  —  An  Inlaid 
Cabinet.  —  Virginia's  Dower  Rights  in  the  Presidency.— 
Five  New  States.  —  The  Three  M's.  —  Proof  from  the  Census 
of  1820  that  Chicago  had  not  started.  —  The  Missouri  Com- 
promise. —  A  Good  Bridle  until  used.  —  Florida  bought  in 
1819.  —  What  we  got  over  the  Bargain. —  The  Florida  Keys. 

—  The  Dry  Tortugas  thrown  in.  —  The  Dews  fortunately  left. 

—  A  Cracked  Cup  in  the  Family  Cupboard.  —  The  Monroe 
Doctrine. 

IX.  TROUBLES  BUBBLE  ;  OR,  THE  SORROWS  OF  JOHN 

QUINCY  ADAMS.      1825-1829.         .          .          .399 

Parallel  between  Sidney  Smith's  Old  Razor  and  J.  Q.  Adams's 
Term.  —  How  several  Gentlemen,  touched  by  Age,  reached 
in  Vain  after  Honors  too  high.  —  Who  they  were  ;  and  what 
Acid  Grapes  the  House  of  Representatives  snatched  from 
them.  —  Pamphleteering  and  Privateering.  —  An  Italian 
Saying.  —  Description  of  a  Good  Statesman  spoiled  in  the 
Mould  of  a  Politician.  —  An  Illustrative  Anecdote.  —  Parti- 
nan  Scales  weighing  Public  Interests.  —  The  Weights.  —  The 
Depravity  of  Political  Blunders.  —  History  v$.  Party  Judg- 
ments. 


CONTENTS.  29 

X.  THE  AGE  OF   HICKORY;    OR,  JACKSON'S   EPOCH. 

1829-1837 402 

Military  Men,  domesticated  to  Civil  Life,  like  tamed  Animals. 
—  General  Jackson's  Camp  Traits  in  the  White  Den  at  Wash- 
ington. —  His  Prehensile  Habits  claw  out  the  Eyes  of  several  , 
Measures. —  How  he  foraged  on  his  Political  Enemies,  and 
turned  his  Troops  of  Friends  into  the  Public  Pastures.  — 
Lord  Palmerston's  Remark  upon  Gladstone  ;  and  its  Ameri- 
can Application.  —  An  Insurrection  among  the  Household 
Cabinet  Troops.  —  How  the  vigorous  Hickory  Club,  wielded 
chivalrously  for  a  Woman,  quelled  it. —  The  President  moves 
on  the  Bank,  and  captures  all  its  Fortified  Poiuts.  —  Chicago 
starts  in  1830. — Why  it  did  not  overtake  and  annex  the 
United  States.  —  South  Carolina  threatens  Nullification,  and 
is  threatened.  —  Mr.  Calhoun  violently  promised  an  elevated 
Position  between  two  Posts.  Mr.  Clay's  Compromise. — 
Horace  Greeley  starts  the  First  Daily  Paper.  —  Its  untimely 
End  bewailed  in  Verse.  —  Black  Hawk  caged  and  shown 
around.  —  Georgia,  the  Cherokees  and  Supreme  Court.  — 
Three  Celebrities  gained  by  the  Seminole  War.. —  Of  Ar- 
kansas and  its  Papal  Little  Rock.  —  Prospects  for  the  Pope 
when  flung  from  the  Tarpeian. — An  Arkansas  Paul  preach- 
ing in  the  American  Athens  and  Corinth.  —  Old  Hickory  and 
the  Nuts  left  to  be  cracked. 

XI.  THE     DUTCH    REIGN    OF    MARTIN    VAN    BUREN. 

1837-1841 409 

A  New-Yorker  reaches  the  White  House,  and  has  Hard  Fare 
there.  —  The  Disadvantages  of  Competition. — A  Financial 
Earthquake  breaks  large  Amounts  of  Crockery.  —  How  much 
made  a  Pile  in  1837.  —  The  Sub-Treasury.  —  The  Connection 
between  long  Messages  and  Anarchy  in  Finance.  —  Defalca- 
tions in  Office.  —  Why  an  Old  Man's  House  is  easily  robbed. 
—  The  Phantom  of  Slavery.  —  Extralts  de  VAfrique.  —  Prin- 
ciples and  Goods  sold  at  a  Profit.  —  A  Political  Trader  loses 
his  Capital,  and  gives  up  Business. 

XII.  THE  HARRISON-TYLER  TROUPE  ;  HOW  IT  PLAYED. 

1841-1845 412 

General  Harrison's  Death  and  Life  Insurance  Companies. — 
Whig  Bank-Bills  with  no  Tyler  Bodies  to  suit  them.  —  A 


30  CONTENTS. 

Good  Flint  which  required  a  first-rate  Gun,  Stock,  Breech, 
and  Barrel,  to  suit  it.  —  Definition  of  Crabs,  etc.  —  The  Ash- 
burton  Treaty.  —  The  Bankrupt  Act,  and  whom  it  helped.  — 
Misfortunes  and  Fortunes.  —  Mr.  Calhouu's  Texas  Trick. — 
Diplomatic  Magic  -  Lanterns  exposed.  —  Roman  -  like  Gar- 
ments with  Carthaginian  Spots.  —  Florida  our  Stocking- 
Heel  ;  how  darned.  —  Yarns  about  it.  —  Iron  Railings  as 
State  Corsets. —  How  the  Florida  Keys  might  be  usefully 
employed. 

XIII.  POLE'S    WHIRL;    OR,    THE    AMERICAN    POLKA. 

1845-1849 416 

The  Floor  Committee  for  the  coming  Polka  described.  —  History 
of  previous  Balls,  Country  Dances,  Virginia  Reels,  Quincy 
Waltzes,  Irish  Jigs,  South  Carolina  Shake-ups,  etc.  —  General 
Taylor,  his  Advances  and  Movements  at  Palo  Alto,  Resaca 
de  la  Palma,  Monterey,  and  Buena  Vista.  —  How  his  Part- 
ner, the  Army,  was  taken  away.  —  General  Scott  among  the 
Mustangs  at  Vera  Cruz,  Natural  Bridge,  Chepultepec,  Mexi- 
co, etc. —  Of  Wool,  Kearny,  Fremont,  and  Commodore  Sloat. 
—  What  New  Mexico  and  California  added  and  subtracted.  — 
The  Mustang  Liniment,  or  Treaty  of  Guadaloupe  Hidalgo.  — 
How  the  Path  for  the  Traditional  Sun  of  Civilization  West- 
ward was  cut  and  paved.  —  Revolvers  judicially  quoted  and 
applied.  —  Peculiar  Fruit  adorning  the  Pendulous  Branches 
of  Trees  in  New  Settlements.  —  What  the  Little  Trick  of  the 
Wizard  of  the  South  conjured  up. —  California  in  1848  and 
now  contrasted. — David  Wilmot  raises  a  Ghost  which  dis- 
turbs several  Party  Feasts.  —  How  the  Polka  Party  broke 
up  ;  and  how  it  pleased  some  and  dissatisfied  others. 

XIV.  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  THE  AMERI- 

CAN HALF-SHELL 424 

The  contrasted  Beginning  and  End  of  the  Half-Century.  — What 
America  brought  to  the  New-Year's  Day  of  1850  in  the  Raw, 
and  what  for  the  Grill  of  more  refined  Tastes. — Historical 
Stews,  and  their  Foreign  and  Domestic  Sauces.  —  What  they 
were.  — Attempts  at,  and  Failures  in,  Insurrections  in  Amer- 
ica.—  Mechanical  Inventions  of  the  Half-Century;  Steam- 
boats,Telegraphs,  Reapers,  Sewing-Machines,  etc. — Their  Ad- 
vantages. —  Vestments  and  Investments.  —  Of  Ether.  —  How 
Populations  drifted  to  Cities.  —  Chicago  bibulous  and  drop- 
sical. —  Public  Men  and  their  Versatile  Principles.  —  News- 


CONTENTS.  31 

papers  and  their  unfulfilled  Prophecies.  —  Plutocracy. — 
Fashions  and  their  Constancy  to  Change.  —  The  Stormy  Pet- 
rels of  Commercial  Disasters.  —  How  Owners  turn  Wreckers. 
—  Profits  out  of  Losses.  —  Of  Merchant  Salvors.  —  The 
Effects  of  Gold  Discoveries  in  California  on  Labor,  Ladies' 
Heads  and  Hearts.  —  Auriferous  Marriages.  —  The  Spite  of 
Midas  against  Children.  —  Ecclesiastical  Gardens  in  Amer- 
ica.—  The  new  Mormon  Shrub  of  the  Genus  Polygamous. — 
Architectural  Improvements.  —  American  Houses  and  their 
Sites. —  Farmsteads  ;  their  Better  Complexion.  —  The  Crops 
from  the  National  Farms,  the  Sea  and  Land,  in  1850. — 
Of  American  Literature,  Science,  Natural  History,  The  Phi- 
losophies and  other  Branches  of  Knowledge,  and  their  Culti- 
vators, through  the  Half- Century. —  Summary  of  the  Bill  of 
Fare  for  the  Repast  on  the  Half-Shell.  —  Its  Character  and 
Critics. 

XV.  THE  BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  ;  OR,  THE  TAYLOR  AND 

FILLMORE  WEBBING.      1849-1853.  .          .    439 

The  Young  Polka  Dancer  becomes  Floor  Manager.  —  The  large 
Apples  of  Discord  emptied  on  the  Floor  of  Congress.  —  What 
they  were  ;  and  the  Pacific  Trees  from  which  they  fell.  — 
Of  California,  New  Mexico,  and  Deseret.  —  General  Taylor's 
Death,  and  Mr.  Fillmore's  suave  Manners  and  smooth  Ap- 
peals.—  Wendell  Phillips  and  J.  Davis.  —  Political  Nurses 
and  Anodynes.  —  Kossuth  and  his  Short  Catechism.  —  How 
it  did  not  take,  and  how  he  did.  —  A  large  Piece  of  Japanned 
Ware.  —  Deaths  of  Clay  and  Webster.  —  The  Autumn  Glory 
which  they  shed  on  a  Stormy  Season. 

XVI.  THE    UNION    PIERCED  ;     OR,    PIERCE'S    TURN. 

1853-1857 443 

Reference,  by  Believers  in  the  Transmigration  of  Souls,  to  Mr.  » 
Pierce  for  its  Proof.  —  His  real  and  apparent  Age.  —  The 
Slave  Colossal  Figure  bestrides  the  Presidential  Harbor. — 
How  the  New  President  rode  in  between  its  Legs,  and  cast 
out  a  curious  Anchor.  —  An  Antediluvian  Cabinet.  —  Still 
Times  expected.  —  Sudden  Freshet.  —  Douglas  breaks  the 
Missouri  Dike.  —  Bitter  Waters  over  the  Land. — Alarm 
among  the  Elderly  Gentlemen,  and  how  quieted  by  J. 
Davis.  —  Alarm  North  and  South  not  quieted.  —  The  Afri- 
can Outlook  towards  the  North  Pole.  —  The  Power  of  Doug- 
las illustrated  from  his  Scotch  Namesake  and  Proverb.— 


32  CONTENTS. 

What  Warriors  rushed  to  our  Flanders.  —  The  Blow  on  the 
Head  of  Sumner  and  Slavery  from  Brooks's  Cane. —  The 
Dred  Scott  Essays.  —  American  Africanization.  —  An  Ex- 
ploring Party  in  the  Interior.  — Discovery  of  an  Extinct 
Race,  and  of  Fremont.—  Undiked  Waters  not  strong  enough 
to  float  Douglas  into  a  Nomination.  —  Buchanan  in  the  Dock. 
—  The  Know-Nothings  make  a  neat  little  Present  to  a  Polite 
Gentleman. 

XVII.  COTTON-SEEDS  SPROUT;  OR,  BUCHANAN'S  AD- 
MINISTRATION. 1857-1861.  .  .  .449 
The  new  Missionary  Party  and  its  Growth.  —  Character  of  Mr. 
Buchanan  and  his  Want  of  Same.  —  Description  of  curious 
Drawers  in  his  Cabinet  —  The  Uses  of  Isaac  Toucey.  —  The 
Lecompton  Constitution  and  how  it  fell  together.  —  African 
Order  of  the  Woolly  Fleece.  — The  Mormon  Magic-Lantern, 
and  its  Shows.  — What  Minnesota  brought  into  the  Union; 
and  how  a  Long-fellow  raised  a  Fall.  —  The  War  of  the 
Illinois  Giants.  —  Abraham  Lincoln  described.  —  Self-made 
Men;  their  Self-ishness  and  Unsymmetrical  Characters.— 
Mr.  Lincoln's  Growth  and  Character  Illustrated.  —  Mr.  Doug- 
las delineated.  —  Presidential  Bonfires,  Tar-Barrels,  and 
Oratory.  —  A  Spectre  in  Virginia;  his  Body  swinging,  his 
Soul  marching  on.  —  A  live  Coal  on  the  Southern  Heart.  — 
What  the  Democratic  Convention  was  asked  to  solve,  and 
what  it  re-solved.  Heads  I  win,  Tails  I  don't  lose.  —  Breck- 
enridge  as  a  rare  Prize-Taker.  —  The  Missionary  Party  makes 
a  Nomination.  —  New  Lights  and  Shadows.  —  An  original 
Recipe  for  threatened  Political  Apoplexy.  —  A  sudden  Con- 
vention in  South  Carolina.  —  Its  mysterious  Origin  and  Dark 
Ways.  —  A  Chaotic  Message.  —  Of  different  Secession  Ordi- 
nances; and  Want  of  Federal  Ordnance.  —  Political  Strikers 
described.  —  General  Cass  and  a  Broken  Heart.  —  John  B. 
Floyd  skedaddles,  chased  by  an  Indictment.  —  General  Ander- 
son. —  Fort  Sumter  breaks  the  Cabinet.  —  The  Confederate 
Government  and  Flag  made.  —  Their  Composition.  —  His- 
tory and  Character  of  J.  Davis.  —  Where  Mr.  Buchanan 
went  March  4,  1861. 

XVTII.      OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.       .          .          .     464 

The  Second  Generation  of  our  Great  Men  nearer  in  Time  but 
not  in  Affection.  —  Several  sufficient  Reasons  therefor.  — 
Ingenious  Biographers  confusing  our  Verdicts  over  old 


CONTENTS.  33 

Offenders.  —  A  Latin  Quotation  to  prove  an  Original  Remark. 

—  Why  we  should  not  stick  to  old  Opinions.  —  Sketches  of 
Clay,  Calhoun,  and  Webster.  —  Parallels  do  not  always  run 
at  equal  Distances.  —  Three  Fates.  —  Original  Anecdote  of 
Webster. — Of  Lewis  Cass  and  Thomas  H.  Benton.  —  Why 
double-chinned  Persons  are  satisfactory.  —  The  Plutocrats 
Girard  and  As  tor;  how  they  made  Fortunes,  and  how  much. 

—  John  Marshall  as  a  Judge,  and  John    Trumbull  as  a 
Painter. —  Albert  Gallatin  skims  American  Cream.  —  Rem-  , 
brandt  Peale  and  Washington    Allston    described.  —  Why 
Felix  Grundy,  S.  S.  Prentiss,  J.  J.  Crittenden,  Samuel  Hous- 
ton, D.  D.  Tompkins,  and  Others,  were  like  Shoots  grafted 
upon  hardy  Native  Stocks.  —  The  Senate  illuminated  by 

J.  M.  Berrian,  S.  L.  Southard,  W.  C.  Preston,  etc.,  Legare", 
and  Butler.  — A  full-length  Portrait  of  Winfield  Scott.— 
Irving  delineated.  —  Drake,  Halleck,  and  Paulding.  —  Fen- 
imore  Cooper  descanted  upon.  —  Science  illustrated  by 
Silliman,  Hare,  and  Rush.  —  Descriptions  of  Prescott,  Mrs. 
Sedgwick,  Greenough,  and  Hawthorne.  —  How  well  the  Sec- 
ond Set  persuaded  the  Eighteenth  Century  over  into  the 
Nineteenth. 

XIX.     THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS   AND  MUSKETS  ;  OR,  LIN- 
COLN'S ADMINISTRATION.      1861  -  1865.  .  480 

IN  THREE  DIVISIONS. 

DIVISION  FIRST. 
COTTOV  VEILS  HIDE  THE  UNIOX.    MARCH  4,  1861,  TO  JANUART  1,  1862. 

Striking  Historical  Contrasts  of  professed  Virtue  and  cruel  En- 
forcement. —  The  American  Fetich ;  its  strange,  passionate 
Worship  and  armed  Adoration.  —  The  Freshet  of  Slavery 
traced  from  its  small  Beginnings.  — Mr.  Lincoln  over  its 
Ridges  lands  in  Washington.  —  A  Striking  Announcement, 
and  who  it  struck.  —  Of  Seward,  Cameron,  and  Chase.  — 
A  Naval  Joke.  —  A  Wry  Fort  makes  Wry  Faces.  —  An 
American  Nightmare.  —  Watching  with  the  Sleeper.  —  Spar- 
ing the  Rod  and  getting  the  Ramrod.  —  Call  for  Seventy-five 
Thousand  Ramrods.  —  Massachusetts  Boys  and  Baltimore 
Hards.  —  Busses  and  Blunderbusses.  —  Few  Office-Seekers, 
but  many  Gun-Holders  in  Washington  in  April,  1861.  —  The 
English  Telescope  and  the  Wonders  it  discovered.  —  A  Dual 
View. —An  Official  Talk  between  two  Lords. —  A  Procla- 
mation to  restrain  Englishmen.  —  A  Parallel.  —  War  Materi- 
2*  o 


34  CONTENTS. 

als,  Forts,  etc.,  generously  given  away  by  Loose-handed  Cus- 
todians. —  Twiggs  inclined  as  Tree  is  bent.  —  Cotton  Cur- 
tain before  Washington;  and  a  near  View  of  it  by  General 
Mansfield.  —  Colonel  Ellsworth.  —  Butler  and  Bethel.  —  Ly- 
ons in  Missouri.  —  McClellan  moves  into  Virginia;  what  he 
found.  —  A  Wise  Man  flees  when  a  real  Man  pursueth.  — 
Bull's  Run  and  General  Run.  —  A  Discovery  and  Noise  over 
it.  —  Stonewall  Jackson  and  Praying  Soldiers.  —  Piety  and 
Powder.  —  A  Drill-Ground  near  Washington.  —  General  Lee's 
First  Kicks  against  the  Pricks. —  Du  Pont  at  Port  Royal. — 
Mason,  Slidell,  and  Vigilant  Friends.  —  John  C.  Brecken- 
ridge  a  striking  Sign-Board.  —  War  in  the  Mississippi  Valley. 
—  Kentucky  and  her  Coy  Wrays.—  A  Spartan  Leonidas  and 
Greek  Ulysses.  —  Christmas  Eve,  1861. 

DIVISION  SECOND. 
COTTON  MOID.    JASUART  1, 1862,  TO  JAMJARY  1, 1864. 

The  Road  to  Peace,  —  Distance  thither  illustrated.  —  What 
certain  Knights  might  have  learned.  — The  Difficulties  cre- 
ated by  losing  Battles  in  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  Missouri,  and 
Arkansas  detailed.  —  What  Grant,  Thomas,  Curtis,  and  others 
did;  and  what  Crittenden,  Zollicoffer,  etc.,  had  done  unto 
them.  —  Whistling  in  the  Woods.  —  Wonderful  Story-telling 
powers  of  J.  Davis.  —  How  he  repeated  Tales  with  charming 
Variation.  —  A  Sea  Story  in  which  Iron  enters.  —  Farragut 
and  Porter  up  the  Mississippi. —  Received  at  New  Orleans 
•with  Illuminations  and  Bonfires. — Butler  deals  with  effer- 
vescing Materials.  —  The  Peninsular  Campaign  traced.  — 
Spading  and  Fighting.  —  The  Glories  and  Disasters  of  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac.  —  The  American  Pope  fallible. — 
Lee's  Trip  into  Man-land. — Accidents  at  South  Mountain 
and  Antietam.  —  Difficult  Questions  besiege  Mr.  Lincoln  in 
Washington.  —  His  New-Year's  Gift  to  the  Slaves.  —  Getting 
rich  on  Paper.  —  Cotton  mixed.  —  A  Depraved  Currency.  — 
Hooker  gets  at  Lee's  Rear  at  Chancellorsville.  —  What  fol- 
lowed. —  Lee  at  Gettysburg;  gets  the  Advertising  its  Springs 
•want.  —  The  Sorrows  of  Vicksburg,  July  4,  1863.  —  The  Mis- 
sissippi open.  —  Mortar-boat  Building.  —  Valor  of  Colored 
Regiments  at  Charleston;  and  of  discolored  Irish  in  New 
York.  —  Contrasts.  —  Grant  Transfigured  at  Missionary  Ridge 
and  Look-Out  Mountain  without  Bragging  of  it 


CONTENTS.  35 

DIVISION  THIRD. 
COTTON  WORSTED.    JANUARY  1, 1864,  TO  APRIL  14, 1865. 

What  the  Confederate  Stool  —  not  of  Repentance,  but  of  Mars  — 
stood  on,  and  how  braced  and  steadied.  —  The  Daisies  and 
Corn-blooms  beneath  it.  —  The  broken  Industries,  harried 
Life,  and  disrupted  Ties  of  Unionists  in  the  Border  States.  — 
Tragedies.  —  Grant  Commander-in-Chief.  —  His  Plan  to  break 
up  the  Nightmare.  —  Work  ahead.  —  Jubal  E.  Early  and  his 
Raids.  —  The  Year  of  Jubal  E.  —  Sherman  at  Atlanta.  — 
The  Southern  Knob  seized,  and  the  main  Door  burst  open.  — 
An  unprotecting  Hood ;  how  it  was  pounded  and  cleft.  — 
Sherman's  Swath  through  Georgia.  —  A  Christmas  Gift  to 
Mr.  Lincoln  of  a  Sheaf.  —  The  Scorpion  Alabama ;  its  Hatch- 
ing out;  its  slimy,  wriggling  Course,  and  sulphureous  End. — 
The  Iron  Jaws  of  Mobile  pried  open,  and  its  Teeth  drawn.  — 
Autumn  Brands  at  the  North.  —  Tokens  of  the  coming  Fall. 

—  Andrew  Johnson  and  the  Goose.  —  Grant  breaks  Things  at 
Petersburg  and  disturbs  J.  Davis  in  Church  at  Richmond.  — 
Flight  of  the  Latter  with  corruptible  Treasures. —  Negro 
Troops  enter  Richmond.  —  Light  Suggestions  thereupon.  — 
A  Meeting  at  Appomattox  Court-House.  —  Leaving  bloody 
Instructions,  Lee  goes  to  College.  —  J.  Davis  in  Court  and  his 
Sentence.  —  A    Thunder-Clap  and  its  Victim.  —  Death  of 
Abraham  Lincoln. 

XX.      VELOCIPEDAL. 516 

How  mixed  Blood  effervesces.  —  Of  the  Causes  and  Develop- 
ments of  American  Fastness.  —  Unrest  in  Prisons  and  at 
Home.  —  Time  lost  in  Sleep,  etc.  —  The  distressing  Hurry  of 
Brains.  —  Compressing  a  Cow  in  a  Milk-Pot.  —  Of  Doctors' 
Gigs  and  Apoplectic  Whirligigs.  —  American  Stomachs  con- 
sidered. —  A  general  Stomach ;  how  employed  and  hired  out. 

—  Doctors'  Bills.  —  Clothes  Wringers  and  State  Wringers.  — 
"  Speedy  Trials  "  secured.  —  The  Common  and  Un-common 
Law  of  the  United  States  considered  at  length.  —  Of  Dower, 
and  how    taken.  —  Property  administered  before  Death.  — 
Heirs  cheated.  —  Injunctions  used.  —  Illinois  Divorces.  —  Of 
Prohibited  Degrees  of  Marriage.  —  Of  Fat  People  and  Ser- 
vants.—  Boarding-Houses  and  Hotels.  —  American  Trade  and 
its  Feats  at  diminishing  Quantities.  —  Fast  Americans  in 

*       Europe.  —  How    they    overcome    Distances,    History,    and 
Landlords.  —  The  Paris  G'enws. 


36  CONTENTS. 

XXI.  PUZZLES  AND  CROSS  READINGS;  OR,  JOHNSON'S 
ENTERTAINMENTS.  APRIL  14,  1865,  TO  MARCH  4, 
1869 526 

Puzzles  about  Hemp  and  Paper.  —  Weak  Brains  at  rest.  — 
The  Return  of  the  Holders  of  Sabres  and  Guns.  —  Our  Dead.  — 
Fighters  become  Workers.  —  A  Modern  Sisyphus  rolls  a  Stone 
up  Hill.  —  How  it  rolled  back.  —  The  Interpretation  by  Con- 
gress of  its  own  Rights.  —  Southern  Delegates  declined.  — 
Puzzles  solved.  —  Vetoing  made  easy.  —  The  New  Orleans 
Riots. —  The  Zig-zag  Journey  of  the  President  to  the  Tomb 
of  Douglas. — The  Fenian  Republic  in  Union  Square.  —  The 
Sham-rock  compared  with  other  Rocks.  —  The  French  Moths 
in  Mexico ;  and  how  they  were  singed.  —  Amnesties  and 
Pardons.  —  Scripture  outdone.  —  Forgiveness  forced  upon 
the  Unrepenting. — Results  of  Congressional  Reconstruction. 
—  The  President  tried  and  one  found  wanting.  —  Value  of  one 
Vote.  —  Alaska  and  St.  Thomas.  —  Chicago,  unalarmed,  goes 
on  dis-pairing  but  not  despairing.  —  The  Narrow  Escapes  of 
New  York.  —  Fiske-Ville.  —  Johnson  gets  Mudd  out  of  the 
Dry  Tortugas. 


XXH.  TAKEN  FOR  GRANTED;  OR,  WHAT  IS  EXPECT- 
ED OF  GRANT  AND  THE  AMERICAN  FUTURE. 
MARCH  4,  1869,  TO 534 

The  supposed  Difficulties  of  writing  History  in  advance  con- 
sidered, and  the  Popular  Delusions  on  the  Subject  disposed 
of.  —  Lively  Expectations  of  what  our  future  Presidents,  Cabi- 
net Members,  Foreign  Ministers,  etc.,  etc.,  will  be  and  do.  — 
What  Citizens  will  be  exempt  from  Executing  and  Garroting 
the  Laws.  —  The  Public  Debt  to  disappear.  —  The  Ways  con- 
sidered. —  Cut  up  into  Dividends  and  no  more  heard  of.  — 
What  is  expected  of  Common  Schools  and  Sunday  Schools  in 
improving  Public  Men  and  their  Speeches.  —  Certain  Occu- 
pations to  be  dispensed  with.  —  The  Uses  to  which  their 
Pursuers  are  to  be  put.  —  Improvements  in  Judges,  Injunc- 
tions, and  Court-Houses.  —  Extension  of  Efforts  of  Society  for 
preventing  Cruelty  to  Animals,  to  Employers,  etc.  — Woman's 
Rights  discussed  from  various  Aspects.  —  Men  and  Women 
equal, — especially  Women.  —  How  any  Differences  between 
them  are  to  be  disposed  of.  —  How  Children  are  to  be  utilized 
before  they  get  to  be  Twenty-one  and  lose  their  Activities.  — 
The  new  Arts  and  Sciences  to  be  taught.  —  Secretary  of  the 


CONTENTS.  37 

Treasury  to  regulate  the  Fashions,  and  how.  —  The  President 
and  Sunday  Schools.  —  All  Mining  to  be  transferred  to  Wall 
Street.  —  Advance  Sheets  of  Reports  for  1969.  —  What  our 
Railway  System  is  to  be.  —  Grumbling  and  Patriotism.  —  Of 
the  Future  of  Chicago,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Bos- 
ton. —  A  Pax  Vobitcwn. 


COLUMBUS  DISCOVERS  AMERICA. 


THE   COMIC    HISTORY   OF   THE 
UNITED   STATES. 


PREFATORY. 

TREATING  THE  READER  TO  AN  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  AUTHOR, 
AND  OF  THE  PLAN,  OBJECT,  AND  PRINCIPLES  OF  THIS 
HISTORY. 

The  Author,  proposing  to  be  intimate  with  the  Reader,  deems  an  Intro- 
duction desirable.  —  Born  Early  and  Poor.  — How  the  Two  Facts  were 
managed  and  overcome.  —  School  Days  and  Nights.  —  College  Lines, 
crooked  and  straight.  —  Father's  Face  against  his.  —  A  New  American 
Decalogue.  —  Into  the  Married  and  other  States  and  Territories.  — 
Settling  down.  —  Advantages  of  a  Sub-urban  Residence.  —  Outside  and 
Inside  Views  of  the  Author's  Head.  —  Plans  and  Purposes  of  the 
Work.  — Laughing  Facts. — Roman  Precedents.  —  Impartiality  holding 
the  Shears  and  Tape.  —  Sources  of  our  Information.  —  Acknowledg- 
ments to  Smith  and  Brown.  —  Our  Illustrations. 


UE  it  is  alike  to  the 
originality  and  dig- 
nity of  this  work,  and 
to  the  respectability, 
comfort,  and  good 
understanding  of  the 
reader  and  ourself, 
that  a  formal  intro- 
duction should  take 
place  at  the  very  out- 
set. 

For    although  we 
feel  sure  that  without 


THE  READER  SCRAPES  ACQUAINTANCE 
WITH  THE  AUTHOR. 


42       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

this  we  shall,  after  keeping  company  together  a  few 
evenings,  exchange  confidences  and  hearts  with  each 
other  for  life,  yet  to  avoid  needless  suspicions, — 
mute  and  silent  though  they  be,  —  and  to  obviate 
the  hazards  and  discomforts  of  injurious  side-glances, 
interrogative  of  my  origin,  person,  parentage,  educa- 
tion, and  moral  character,  —  which  the  paterfamilias 
may,  and  naturally  would,  cast  upon  a  new  teacher, 
who  offers  to  take  a  place  in  his  household,  sit  in 
one  corner  of  the  family  room  when  the  lamps  are 
lit,  and  to  sleep  in  the  spare  bedroom  when  they 
are  turned  down,  —  I  propose  to  state  at  once  who 
it  is  that  comes  with  this  friendly  audacity,  what 
are  his  intentions,  and  how  he  expects  to  behave 
himself  in  a  relation  at  once  so  familiar  and  respon- 
sible, viz.  that  of  a  good-natured,  equable,  humorous 
companion  and  friend,  indicating  and  painting  facts 
in  a  pleasant,  genial,  and  healthy  way. 

First,  then,  as  to  ourself.  I  say  not  myself;  for 
this  would  be  to  roll  immediately  my  complex  egoism 
out  of  the  manifold  garments  which  a  historian  wears 
of  course ;  but  I  say  Ourself,  that  gathered,  round 
Impersonation  which  may  be  well  supposed  to  be  a 
crystallized  something,  like  a  cunning  frost-work  on 
the  long  window-panes  of  history,  —  an  armless  hand 
writing  Mene  and  other  hieroglyphics  on  the  wall, 
or  a  Briareus  with  his  hundred  hands,  heads,  and  feet, 
running  in  a  hundred  different  ways,  staring  through 
a  hundred  telescopes  at  the  calm  ages,  and  writing 
with  a  century  of  hands  the  doings,  undoings,  and 
misdoings  of  the  race.  This  manifold,  dignified  mys- 
tery I  mean  to  put  on  and  wear  after  this  chapter ;  but 


PREFATORY.  43 

in  order  to  insure  the  confidence  which  I  now  seek,  I 
shall  slip,  for  a  few  minutes,  out  of  my  state  gear,  and 
taking  your  hand,  —  now  no  longer  withheld  nor  even 
hesitatingly  given,  —  look  trustingly  into  your  eyes, 
and  mention  a  few  of  those  particulars  of  myself, 
which  you  have  a  gracious  right  to  know,  in  order  to 
judge  of  my  standing  in  the  world,  my  intellectual 
competency  and  fitness,  and  the  plumptitude  of  my 
moral  proportions. 

I  was  born  very  early  in  life ;  so  early,  in  fact,  that 
although  present,  and  making  such  an  effort  as  befitted 
my  first  appearance,  I  was  so  inexpressibly  interested 
in  the  matter,  that  I  forgot  my  future  office,  that  of 
recorder  of  passing  events.  The  fact  of  my  birth  —  a 
fact  which  is  apt  to  happen  to  most  people  —  is  not 
perhaps  so  singular  as  that,  being  born  in  the  United 
States,  I  contrived  to  live  beyond  the  first  five  years, 
that  fatal  semi-decade.  I  ought,  perhaps,  now  to  add, 
in  order  to  quiet  any  apprehensions  after  my  last 
alarming  remark,  that  "  I  still  live  "  ;  and  that,  having 
survived  the  perils  and  plums  of  parental  kindness  in 
infancy,  I  hope  to  outlive  the  equally  fatal  neglect  and 
indifference  which  marks  our  treatment  of  old  age. 

My  parents,  at  the  time  I  was  given  to  the  world, 
were  poor,  and,  therefore,  not  respectable.  They  had 
been  simple  enough  to  marry  young,  and  for  love ;  and 
although  they  had  mated  each  other  well,  they  had 
failed  to  put  a  yoke  upon  the  neck  of  fortune.  These 
early  struggles,  however,  stiffened  in  them  the  moral 
elements,  and  marbleized,  so  to  speak,  the  soft  woods 
of  their  country  natures,  making  a  substance  very  dif- 
ferent from  that  thin,  moral  veneering  which  is  uphol- 


44       THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

stered  from  the  beechen  groves  that  timber  the  sunny 
slopes  of  life.  Both  of  them  were  Presbyterians; 
always  attending  the  Sunday  services,  sitting  in  a  gal- 
lery seat,  close  to  the  pulpit,  and  so  taking  the  brunt 
of  the  hard  blows  which  were  rightfully  felt  in,  and  — 
I  sometimes  thought — spent  themselves  upon,  our 
uncushioned  pew. 

An  offer  from  my  father's  brother,  who  had  become 
rich  in  mercantile  business,  drew  my  father  and  the 
family  in  my  fifth  year  to  the  city  of  Philadelphia. 
With  this  change  of  base  came  sharper  tactics  against 
the  army  of  poverty  ;  and  at  last,  by  fighting  it  on  the 
same  line,  although  it  took  all  the  summer  of  his  life/ 
he  achieved  the  victory.  I  was  then  sent  to  the  best 
schools ;  took  lessons  at  home  in  some  branches  from 
a  private  teacher ;  took  —  I  own  it  now  —  lessons  in 
other  branches  privately,  out  of  the  house,  without  my 
father's  knowledge,  although  at  his  expense  for  the 
tuition ;  and  at  last  I  went  to  college. 

Hard  study,  matched  by  an  irrepressible  love  of 
pranks  at  night;  a  knowledge  of  Euclid's  lines  and 
clothes  line;  of  belles-lettres  and  unlettered  belles; 
of  geometrical  and  other  squares ;  of  chemistry  applied 
to  known  uses  and  to  experiments  for  which  there 
were  no  precedents  in  the  books  ;  prizes  offered  by  the 
faculty,  and  prizes  offered  by  Mrs.  Green  and  Mrs. 
White  in  the  persons  of  their  handsome  daughters,  — 
these  all  braided  together  the  threads  of  my  university 
life  into  a  pattern  which,  if  not  unusual,  was  made  up 
principally  of  figures  little  admired  at  home. 

My  father  was  not  at  all  pleased  with  the  well-red 
bill  I  brought  with  me,  and  quite  as  little  with  the 


PREFATORY.  45 

unsigned  ones  which  followed  me,  from  college ;  and, 
concluding  that  I  might  run  my  own  face  for  a  while, 
set  his  sharply  against  me. 

I  took  to  teaching ;  sounding  over  again  the  shallow 
depths  of  old  studies,  but  often  striking  the  lead  on 
the  rocky  bottom  of  a  temper  too  long  indulged  not  to 
be  stern  when  touched  by  children's  thoughtlessness. 

My  father's  death  cast  upon  me  responsibilities  for 
my  mother  and  the  estate,  which  dropped  the  Gurtain 
upon  my  dream-life,  and  lifted  it  from  the  long  per- 
spective of  actual  work  and  business  cares.  Among 
my  father's  papers  I  found  the  following  original  docu- 
ment, which  I  reproduce  here,  as  showing  his  shrewd- 
ness of  observation,  and  the  character  of  the  parent 
who  helped  to  form  some  elements  of  my  own. 

"A  NEW  AMERICAN  DECALOGUE. 

"  Hear,  0  Jonathan,  the  commandments  which  thou 
hast  made,  —  teaching  them  to  thy  infants,  thy  Freed- 
men,  thy  Irishmen,  thy  office-holders,  —  the  asses 
within  thy  gates. 

I. 

"  Thou  shalt  have  no  other  God  but  Gain.  Trade, 
and  labor,  husband-ry  and  all  other  brokerage,  shall 
be  his  profits. 

II. 

"  Graven  images  and  pictures  other  than  greenbacks 
and  fractional  currency  thou  shalt  not  make. 

"  These  shalt  continue  to  be  unlike  anything  else- 
where, in  the  heavens  above  or  in  the  earth  beneath ; 
and  to  them,  therefore,  thou  mayst  bow  down  thyself 


46       THE   COMIC  HISTORY  OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

unto  the  thirty-third  or  thirty-fourth  generation,  using 
up  in  their  pursuit  all  thy  soles,  thy  health,  and  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself. 

in. 

"  Thou  shalt  not  mistake  any  other  god  for  the  afore- 
said, such  as  Keligion,  True  Worship,  Charity,  Virtue, 
Obedience,  Truth  ;  for  Gain,  being  a  jealous  God,  re- 
quires all  your  time,  strength,  health,  soul,  and  body, 
and  will  show  no  mercy  upon  those  who  keep  not  his 
day-book,  ledger,  and  cash-books. 

rv. 

"  Eemember  the  Sabbath  day  to  keep  it  wholly  to 
thyself. 

V. 

"  Honor  thy  children,  bowing  down  to  them  and 
worshipping  them,  giving  them  what  they  least  re- 
quire, that  their  days  m'ay  be  the  shortest,  in  the 
United  States,  of  all  lands  whatsoever. 

VL 

"  Thou  shalt  not  kill  the  goose  which  lays  the  golden 
eggs. 

VTL 

"  Thou  shalt  commit  adulterations  with  almost  ev- 
erything in  the  earth  beneath,  and  especially  by  the 
waters  which  are  throughout  the  world. 

vm. 

"  Thou  shalt  steal  whenever  an  official  opportunity 
offers. 


PREFATORY.  47 

"  Making  a  Csesar  of  thyself,  thou  shalt  render  unto 
him  all  the  money  that  is  brought  unto  thee. 

IX. 

"  Thou  shalt  forbear  all  witness  against  thy  neigh- 
bor ;  lest  thy  time  be  consumed  needlessly  in  the  pub- 
lic service,  and  he  afterwards,  also,  witness  against 
thee. 

x. 

"  Thou  shalt  acquire  so  much  by  the  foregoing  com- 
mandments, as  not  to  covet  thy  neighbor's  house  and 
lot,  nor  any  other  real  or  un-real  estate  of  his  whatso- 
ever." 

Settling  up  the  property  which  my  father  had  ac- 
cumulated, although  disregarding  this  code,  and  unset- 
tling myself,  I  roamed  abroad  long  and  widely ;  prac- 
tically dog-earing  in  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa  the 
leaves  of  that  illuminated  volume  of  travel  which  I 
had  all  my  life  been  intent  to  own. 

Then  came  marriage,  —  religious  convictions, — 
studying  for  the  ministry,  —  children  in  the  house, 

—  studying  them,  and  how  to  feed  them,  —  ordina- 
tion, —  a   call   to   a  rus-urban   congregation    in    the 
vicinity  of  New  York,  —  only  a  short  hour's  ride  on  a 
rail,  and  well  feathered,  without  tar,  by  plentiful  dust, 

—  preaching  to  an  assemblage,  gathered  from  behind 
sharp   counters   on   -week-days,   to   measure   my  dis- 
courses critically,  and  to  secure  their  money's  worth  on 
Sundays,  —  and   all   the   nameless   little   experiences 
that  roll  over  the  cog-wheels  of  a  suburban  parson's 
life.     Two  bronchial  attacks  commissioned  me  to  look 


48       THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

up  a  better  throat,  —  once  in  a  journey  to  South 
America,  and  once  across  the  prairies  to  California. 

These  experiences,  added  to  their  predecessors,  have 
accumulated,  with  my  readings,  the  materials  for  a 
history  which  the  leisure  half-hours,  paragraphed  be- 
tween the  compact  duties  of  my  thirty  years  of  min- 
isterial work,  have  permitted  me  to  put  together,  and 
which  now,  dear  reader,  I  place,  as  my  cor  cordium, 
in  your  hands. 

It  is  the  cream,  skimmed  from  my  carefully  kept 
dairy;  or  rather  the  condensed  milk  of  my  very 
being,  left  at  your  door,  to  make  your  tea  pleasanter, 
and  your  pudding  sweeter  and  richer. 

As  you  may  be  curious  to  possess,  and  I  am  most 
happy  of  an  opportunity  to  get  off  my  latest  photo- 
gram,  I  add,  as  an  item  serving  to  assist  you  in  mak- 
ing up  the  sum  of  my  qualifications,  this 


EXTERNAL  VIEW  OF  THE  AUTHOR'S  HEAD, 

bare-ly  remarking  that  as  its  unfurnished  state  may 
disappoint  you,  I  will  endeavor  to  restore  your  pleas- 
ing illusion,  by  giving  you  gratuitously 


PREFATORY. 


49 


A»  INSIDE  VIEW, 

flattering  myself  that,  although  you  may  find  nothing 
in  it,  you  will  at  least  confess,  that  seldom  dare  an 
author  venture  upon  such  an  exposure  of  his  stock  in 
trade. 

Having  now  furnished  all  the  main  elements  which 
will  enable  my  pupil  readers  to  outline  my  intellectual 
portraiture,  having  frankly  shown  four  sides  of  my- 
self, —  a  lower  side  and  an  upper  side,  an  outside  and 
inside,  —  being  the  only  sides,  I  trust,  that  I  shall 
take  in  this  history,  I  crave  leave  now  to  add, 
secondly,  a  word  as  to  the  plan,  object,  and  principles 
of  this  history.  They  are,  in  brief,  to  put  facts,  verita- 
ble and  authentic  facts,  whether  agreeable  or  dis- 
agreeable in  themselves,  in  that  pleasing  dress  that 
will  make  them  welcome  visitors  to  the  drawing-room, 
good  chums  in  the  bedchamber,  chatty  companions  in 
the  cars,  on  steamers  and  steamboats,  jolly  physicians 


50       THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

to  the  dyspeptically  lean,  and  pleasantly  wise  counsel- 
lors to  the  troubled. 

I  feel  so  sure  that,  as  not  one  of  the  illuminated 
readers  of  these  chronicles  has  ever  mistaken  dulness 
for  wisdom,  so  not  one  will  need  be  reminded  that  the 
most  solid  and  trusted  truths  may  wear  the  smiles  of 
joy  and  hilarity. 

The  Romans  on  their  solemn  festival  days  were 
wont  to  carry  in  their  processions  the  images  of  their 
ancestors,  even  those  long  deceased,  wreathed  with 
flowers.  So  carry  we  the  images  of  the  Past,  gar- 
landed with  the  rosy  links  of  fun  and  jollity. 

We  shall  not  be  tempted  by  the  lure  of  originality, 
nor  even  by  the  attractive  ambition  of  gaining  credit 
for  profound  critical  and  historical  acumen,  to  follow 
the  late  fashion  of  dressing  up  stale  and  unwholesome 
characters  in  fine  clothes  and  qualities.  We  shall 
neither  foist  the  virtuous  regimentals  and  well-earned 
epaulettes  of  Wasliington  upon  Benedict  Arnold,  nor 
tease  history  to  fling  a  mantle  of  false  charity  over 
Burr's  treason.  We  shall  not  worry  the  public  con- 
science into  any  praise,  however  faint,  of  the  crimson 
waistcoat  of  Mr.  Jefferson  Davis,  nor  waste  any  admi- 
ration upon  the  spotted  neck-tie,  perhaps  too  loosely 
drawn,  of  Jacob  Thompson.  Impartial  justice  shall 
hold  our  tape  and  handle  our  shears. 

It  is  usual  for  historians  to  indicate  the  sources  of 
their  information ;  but  as  we  have  refused  no  means 
of  enriching  these  annals,  using  for  that  purpose  what- 
ever materials  our  multiform  reading  could  supply,  from 
the  Eamayana,  the  great  Sanscrit  epic,  impressed  on 
wax,  down  to  the  last  published  child's  primer,  printed 


PREFATORY.  51 

on  patented  wooden  paper,  we  could  not  name  all  our 
authorities  without  giving  a  catalogue  inconvenient 
for  our  publishers,  and  too  long  for  the  abridged  lives 
of  our  readers.  We  cannot,  however,  refrain  from 
acknowledging  our  obligations  to  John  Smith,  Esq., 
for  original  information,  novel  ideas,  and  new  turns 
of  thought  around  old  notions,  running  through  every 
page  of  this  history;  to  Mr.  Jones,  for  valuable 
public  documents ;  and  to  Mr.  Brown,  the  well-known 
sexton  of  Grace  Church,  New  York,  who  in  the  course 
of  his  lifelong  diggings,  has  exhumed  several  pieces 
of  Americans,  whom  we  have  reconstructed  and  pre- 
served in  our  historical  cases. 

As  to  the  illustrations  which  flash  upon  and  light 
up  our  pages,  they  will  speak  for  themselves ;  if  they 
do  not,  any  word  of  ours  would  be,  Vox  et  preterea 
nihti. 


BOOK    FIRST. 

DISCOVERIES. 
B.  C.  TO  1607  A.  D. 


"  Through  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs, 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the  process  of  the  suns.' 

TENNYSON. 


"  Here  are  old  trees,  tall  oaks  and  gnarled  pines 
That  stream  with  gray,  green  mosses ;  here  the  ground 
Was  never  touched  by  spade,  and  flowers  spring  up 
Unsown  and  die  ungathered.     It  is  sweet 
To  linger  here  among  the  flitting  birds 
And  leaping  squirrels,  wandering  brooks,  and  winds 
That  shake  the  leaves  and  scatter  as  they  pass 
A  fragrance  from  the  cedars  thickly  set 
With  pale  blue  berries.     In  their  peaceful  shades, 
Peaceful,  unpruned,  immeasurably  old, 
My  thoughts  go  up  the  long,  dim  path  of  years 
Back  to  the  earliest  days." 

BRYANT. 


"  That  would  be  wooed  and  not  unsought  be  won." 

SHAKESPEARE. 


CHAPTER  I. 


OF  AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY    IN  THE  FIFTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

B.  C.  —  1000  A.  D. 

America  older  than  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa.  —  Chronic  Errors  on  the 
Subject.  —  Europe  presented  to  America.  —  Truth  vindicated. — 
Proofs  of  our  Superior  Antiquity.  —  Luxurious  Civilization  of  the 
Races  who  stocked  this  Continent  before  the  Indians.  —  Amount  of 
Coal  left  by  them  unburned.  —  Large  supplies  of  Fish  packed  away 
safely  in  our  Mountains.  —  Fish  Culture  Measure  of  Human  Culture. 
—  Fossil  Cran-iology.  —  Laughable  Blunders  of  Former  Historians 
and  Ethnologists.  —  Ancient  Nations,  Babylonian,  Assyrian,  Persian, 
Greek,  Ten  Lost  Tribes,  etc.,  trickling  through,  appearing  on  this 
Side  of  the  Earth.  —  Instances  cited.  —  Mythologies  of  Greece  and 
Rome  originated  here.  —  Proofs  and  Reproofs.  —  American  Nests  well 
feathered  Ages  ago.  —  Large  Stocks  for  Future  Use. 


H 


ITHERTO   not 
only      foreign 
writers,  but  even  our 
own  people,  have  ig- 
nored the  existence 
of  America  prior  to 
what     is    popularly 
called  its  discovery, 
-±*  a  phenomenon  which 
^  might  be  more  appro- 
priately denominated 
a  return  of  the  de- 
scendants of  the  old 
stock  to  the  haunts  of  their  forefathers.     That  event 


. 

AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY. 


56       THE   COMIC  HISTOKY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

—  reserved  until  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century  of 
the  Christian  era,  after  the  invention  of  gunpowder 
had  exploded  numerous  obstructions  in  the  path  of 
progress,  and  just  before  the  Lutheran  Reformation 
came  in  with  its  fresh  needs  for  more  room  —  turned 
up  an  Old  World  for  new  uses. 

Of  course  the  newly  ventilated  space  thus  redis- 
covered excited  much  talk  at  the  time,  and  created 
a  sensation  in  that  unsensational  age.  The  first  Eu- 
ropeans who  were  presented  to  America  were  as  much 
elated,  as  Americans  now  at  their  presentation  to 
European  courts;  as  if  America,  like  those  courts, 
had  not  existed  and  had  not  had  its  shows,  jewels, 
follies,  history,  and  fdtes,  centuries  before  they  were 
shown  up  to  it.  Has  not  this  sensation  lasted  quite 
long  enough  ?  Is  it  not  time  —  now  that  nearly  four 
hundred  years  have  allowed  the  first  ardor  and  sur- 
prise to  cool  off — to  vindicate  the  claim  of  the 
Western  Continent  against  the  long-suffered  error  of 
mistaking  what  they  were  new  to  for  what  was  itself 
new? 

The  arrogant  pretensions  of  what  is  pleased  to  call 
itself  the  Old  World  have  quite  long  enough  kept 
back  our  bashful  and  blushing  claims. 

Indeed,  in  our  chronic  modesty,  we  are  allowing 
our  country  to  get  somewhat  mature  in  speaking  of 
itself  as  new;  while  even  children  now  know  that 
ours  is,  in  fact,  the  elder  continent.  Agassiz  is  not 
gassing  us  when  he  picks  our  ancient  Alleghany  flints 
and  tells  us,  that  the  camp-fires  in  the  Lackawanna, 
Schuylkill,  and  Lehigh  valleys  blazed  away  long 
before  those  at  Newcastle  and  in  the  English  Black 


AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY.  57 

Country  were  lit  up.  The  Eocky  Mountains  got  up 
their  vertebrated  backs  ages  before  Mont  Blanc  put 
on  such  cool  airs  and  carried  its  head  so  loftily  over 
the  more  modest  chignon  of  our  Orizaba  and  Long's 
Peak.  The  Mississippi  got  down  to  its  delta  long 
before  the  Ehone  or  Ehine  reached  even  their  alpha. 
Let  us  then  henceforth  assert  the  dignity  of  our 
superior  antiquity;  and  commiserate  the  other  half 
of  the  globe  in  being  so  long  unknown  to  our  older 
America. 

What  was  the  precise  height,  the  fashionable  color 
of  hair  and   eyes,    the    modish    vices,  the   sartorial 
virtues,  of  the  races  which  stocked  our  prairies,  and 
hunted  plesiosauria,  and  megalosauria,  and  other  tall 
game  along  our  wide  valleys,  and  across  the  granite 
peaks  of  our  long  mountain  ranges,  we  have  not  now 
at  hand  any  plates  or  photographs  to  show  ;  but  well 
do  we  know  that  we  are  very  much  obliged  to  them 
for  leaving  unburned  such  lots  of  good  coal,  snugly 
stowed  away  in  dry,  ample  cellars ;  and  that  those 
cellars  were  placed  in  such  a  peaceable  Quaker  State 
as  Pennsylvania,  where  we  can  go  and  help  ourselves 
by  the  cart-load  without  getting  into  a  stew.     How 
beautifully,   too,   they  —  those    young    Americans  — 
packed  away  their  fish  ;  so  well  that  they — the  fish 
—  are  now  just  as  fresli  as  when  Noah  performed  his 
maritime    adventure,   Moses   was    fished   up   by  the 
banks  of  the  Nile,  or  Jonah  became  cargo  in  the  deeply 
laden  whale. 

What  large  provisions  those  jolly  dwellers  on  this 
hemisphere,  long  ages  ago,  must  have  made,  when  we 
find  such  abundance  of  funny  finny  things,  so  care- 
3* 


58       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

fully  stowed  away  in  layers,  all  over  the  continent, 
from  the  icy  plains  around  the  North  Pole,  down 
through  the  Isthmus  belt,  and  along  the  saw-shaped 
ridges  of  South  America,  to  the  farthermost  cape. 
Now,  if  we  had  no  other  proof  of  the  high  civilization, 
we  may  truthfully  say,  the  dainty  and  luxurious 
refinement,  of  those  pre-Columbian  inhabitants  of  this 
hemisphere,  the  existence  of  these  fish,  so  beautifully 
canned,  —  better  disposed,  in  fact,  than  if  they  had 
been  arranged  in  layers  by  the  accomplished  herring- 
packers  of  Scotland  or  Holland,  —  we  might  safely 
rest  there  the  well-digested  argument ;  knowing  well, 
as  all  our  readers  do,  that  the  love  of  fish  was  one  of 
the  peculiar  features  that  marked  the  highest  point 
of  Assyrian,  Egyptian,  and  Persian  civilization ;  re- 
membering that  in  the  time  of  Pericles,  the  pol- 
ished Athenian  left  the  charming  music  of  his  flow- 
ing speech,  when  he  heard  the  bell  in  the  Agora  an- 
nounce that  the  fish  auction  had  begun ;  and  further 
recalling  the  fact  that  the  fish-ponds  of  Lucul- 
lus,  Pompey,  Crassus,  and  the  millionnaire  Romans, 
gauged,  like  yard-sticks,  the  intellectual  culture  of 
Borne. 

Fossil  cranes  have  also  been  found  ingeniously 
tucked  away  in  appropriate  crusts,  —  a  cran-iological 
development  not  to  be  overlooked ;  although  upon  this 
head  we  forbear  to  enlarge.  The  Hadrosaurus  —  now 
restored  to  us  by  strangely  unsubstantial  Water-house 
Hawkins  —  shows  that  in  his  (i.  e.  the  former  H.'s) 
production  what  countless  ages  must  have  been  ex- 
hausted and  for  his  sustenance  what  numberless  lives 
consumed,  which,  if  unslaughtered,  might  have  gone 


AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY. 


59 


60       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

on,  and  after  centuries  of  growth  developed  to  be  not 
only  men,  but  even  American  voters. 

"  Perhaps  in  scaly  armor,  up  and  down  those  ancient  seas, 
Roamed  he  with  an  appetite  that  nothing  could  appease  ; 
Crushing  shoals  and  hosts  of  being,  every  one  of  whom  that  ran 
Would,  in  course  of  time  and  season,  have  developed  up  to  man  ; 
But  fata  sic  profulgent,  and  we  only  may  bewail 
Our  dear  relations  slaughtered  when  this  monster  curled  his  tail." 

From  what  has  already  been  said  it  is  clear  that 
many  of  the  aboriginal  settlers  in  this  half  of  the 
world  died  game  to  the  last. 

After  mention  of  these  higher  arguments  of  our 
elder  civilization,  we  shall  not  weaken  the  proofs  by 
an  exhibition  of  later  American  antiquities,  such  as 
the  sculptured  temples  found  in  Yucatan  and  Central 
America ;  the  time-coated,  swallow-tailed  fanes  of  the 
Peruvians ;  the  exaggerated  structures  of  the  dwarfed 
Aztecs ;  or  the  tall  earth -mounds  which,  scattered 
from  Lake  Erie  through  the  Mississippi  Valley,  and 
forced  through  the  tight-set  lips  of  the  Isthmus,  are 
at  last  swallowed  up  by  Venezuela. 

Many  doubtless  are  the  swarms  that  have  hived 
here  through  the  busy  centuries  which  preceded  the 
Egyptian  Pharaohs,  the  comparatively  modern  empires 
of  Assyria,  Persia,  and  China,  and  the  still  later  king- 
doms of  Agamemnon  and  Priain;  empires  and  king- 
doms that  stand  on  the  dim  frontis-pages  of  our  ordi- 
nary histories.  These  hives,  overflowing  their  quar- 
ters, have  sent  out  superfluous  swarms  across  the  ^  ice 
bridge  over  our  northern  strait  into  the  plains  of  Asia, 
and  thence  into  Africa  and  Europe. 

Laughable  indeed  is  the  exhibition  which  erudite 


AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY.  61 

European  historians,  ethnologists,  and  others  have 
made  of  themselves  in  deducing  from  Asia,  as  the 
rnother-swarm,  the  colonies  that  have  peopled  the 
world ;  when  in  truth  Asia  was  only  the  hall-way 
house,  the  luncheon-place  of  our  trampers,  on  their 
march  into  their  foggy  countries  and  chronicles. 

Thus  it  is  now  ascertained  by  late  researches  that 
there  is  a  great  resemblance  between  the  languages 
of  the  Mongols  and  Japanese,  and  those  of  Equador 
and  New  Granada.  Hopes  are  entertained  that  anti- 
quarians may  discover  some  ancient  precedents  for  our 
Yankee  tongues  and  words  derived  from  sources  whose 
authoritative  beginnings  now  puzzle  us. 

So,  too,  no  doubt,  migrations  homeward  have  taken 
place  from  the  faded  and  colorless  scenes  of  these 
exploring  raids. 

Hitherward  trickled,  probably,  the  ten  Israelitish 
tribes,  hitherto  supposed  to  be  lost,  diffusing  them- 
selves wanderingly  for  the  past  two  thousand  five 
hundred  and  eighty-nine  years,  and  now  collecting 
in  pools  in  our  towns  and  cities,  and  around  our  stock- 
exchanges. 

Here,  too,  have  reappeared,  after  going  in  on  the 
other  side,  the  broken  pieces  of  the  empire  of  Nine- 
veh, mixed  up  with  fragments  of  its  gates  of  brass, 
which  fused  in  the  transmission,  have  veneered  the 
faces  of  those  who  pulled  through,  forming  in  their 
descendants  the  race  of  brazen-faced  itinerant  pedlers, 
auctioneers,  and  plumbers  among  us. 

So  the  ancient  empire  of  Egypt,  shivered  up  by 
Caesar,  percolating  through,  at  last  dripped  into  that 
stalagmite,  the  Tombs  of  New  York,  with  its  newly 


62       THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

formed  but  not  reformed  Csesars  and  Pompeys  in- 
side. 

In  a  word,  most  of  the  old  kingdoms,  and  even 
cities,  such  as  Troy,  Home,  Syracuse,  Alexandria, 
Macedon,  Athens,  Sparta,  and  others,  disappearing 
from  sight  on  the  other  and  newer  hemisphere,  and 
straining  through  into  ours,  have  come  out  on  our 
side  condensed  by  the  pressure  in  small  spots,  but 
with  similar  names,  —  spots  smaller  but  just  as  smart 
and  big-feeling  as  their  larger  selves.  This,  too,  ac- 
counts for  our  sudden  expansions,  whether  in  crinoline 
or  credit ;  the  compressed  and  squeezed  germ  reassert- 
ing 6ften  its  chance  for  pristine  greatness  in  sudden 
and  unexpected  ways. 

Now  that  we  have  started  the  train  of  thought,  each 
of  our  readers  can  easily  turn  engineer  and  stoker,  and 
by  applying  a  little  fuel  of  his  own,  can  drive  it  over 
all  the  various  tracks  which  run  from  his  metropolitan, 
central  brain. 

"No  wonder,"  each  one  will  exclaim,  "that  our 
people  are  so  thin  after  so  much  pressing  of  their 
ancestors ;  no  wonder  at  our  new-minted  words,  the 
old  ones  having  been  fused  at  a  red  heat  in  the  cen- 
tral fires." 

Here,  too,  is  the  secret  of  our  burning  eloquence. 
This  is  the  source  of  our  extraordinary  architecture, 
borrowed,  like  an  actor's  costume  at  a  fancy  ball,  from 
huddled  heaps  of  clothing  made  for  others,  and  brought 
together  in  party-colored,  but  ill-sorted  union.  Looked 
at  from  this  angle,  we  can  account,  too,  for  our  mytho- 
logical tendencies,  —  the  invocations  to  Jove,  when 
surprised;  the  devotion  to  Apollo  in  our  magazines; 


AMERICA  BEFORE  ITS  DISCOVERY.  63 

the  frequent  use  of  the  lyre  in  our  trade ;  the  love  for 
bare  shoulders,  like  Junos,  in  our  divine  assemblages  ; 
our  leanings  at  night  to  Bacchus ;  and  other  customs 
and  habits  that  creep  out  even  from  under  pan-taletes. 
Greece  at  first  took  her  Olympus  from  us;  and  we 
in  the  course  of  time  have,  like  affectionate  parents, 
borrowed  it  back  again. 

From  these  varied  proofs  it  is  manifest  that,  before 
Columbus  brought  over  to  America  specimens  of  the 
European  stock  existing  in  his  time,  our  hemi- 
sphere had  been  hard  at  work  firing  up  at  Popocate- 
petl ;  scooping  out  harbors  on  our  coasts ;  creasing  our 
valleys  in  fluvial  grooves  for  our  fast-running  craft  and 
boats ;  feathering  the  future  nests  of  a  later  posterity 
with  materials  for  use ;  and  in  general  laying  in  a  large 
stock  for  a  successful  business  to  be  taken  up  and 
carried  on  afterwards  by  those  who  should  come  back 
from  their  migrations  to  become  large  dealers  in  uni- 
versal notions,  general  purveyors,  forwarders  and  ad- 
vancers on  all  kinds  of  property,  from  continents  to  a 
spool  of  cotton,  from  polar  Alaska  ice  to  West  India 
warming-pans  and  peppery  troches. 

How  long  it  took  them  to  flutter  back  to  these  old 
deserted  nests,  how  many  were  lost  before  they  had 
fairly  got  settled  in  them,  and  what  broods  now  chirp, 
sing,  and  crow,  through  branches  new  and  old,  honest 
or  brittle,  these  pages  are  full  fledged  to  show. 


CHAPTEK  II. 

OF  THE  DISCOVERIES  IN  AMERICA  DURING  THE  ELEVENTH, 
FIFTEENTH,  SL\.  i^NTH,  AND  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURIES. 

1000-1607. 

America  not  discovered  by  Jason.  —  Lithographic  Specimens  attributed 
to  the  Northmen  in  the  Eleventh  Century  curious,  but  by  Skalds 
more  Modern.  —  Bishop  Berkeley's  Western  Star  not  the  First 
American  Constellation.  —  Columbus  offers  a  Continent  at  Private 
Sale ;  Isabella,  a  Spanish  Lady,  takes  him  up,  and  the  Profits  also.  — 
Of  Ferdinand's  Necklace.  —  Price  of  Eggs  advanced  in  Spain.  —  Eng- 
land finally  sees  Something.  —  A  Fish  Story  confirmed.  —  Discoveries 
which  Columbus  did  not  make.  —  Ponce  de  Leon.  —  Mexico  unfortu- 
nately discovered.  —  The  Straits  of  Magellan  and  other  Straits.  —  De 
Soto  at  the  Bottom  of  the  Mississippi.  —  Champlain,  a  wise  Man, 
founds  Quebec  upon  a  Rock.  —  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  and  him  smoking. 
—  The  Mayflower  anchored.  —  Hudson  up  Stream. 

A  MERICA  was   not   discovered  by  Jason  while 

/  % 

JT\.  looking  up  the  golden  fleece,  although  the  ex- 
istence of  many  American  habits  point  to  an  origi- 
nator, whose  name  is  lost,  but  whose  Asiatic  practices 
are  not.  It  is  supposed  by  some  that  the  late  war 
crops  were  the  product  of  certain  stray  dragon's  teeth, 
possibly  dropped  by  that  wily  Greek  on  our  prolific 
soil.  But  these  hypotheses,  although  as  wise  as  many 
others  connected  with  early  maritime  discoveries,  are 
too  learned  to  be  useful.  History  declines  to  pull 
such  wool  over  the  eyes  of  its  readers  or  to  encourage 
traditions  which  flatter  the  pride  of  ancient  nations, 
whose  age  is  the  only  excuse  for  their  fond,  grand- 


LATER  DISCOVERIES  IN  AMERICA.  65 

fatherly  dotings.  Nor  is  it  any  more  true  that  the 
Northmen,  in  the  eleventh  century,  fell  upon  this  out- 
lying continent,  when  engaged  in  general  lithography 
along  our  coasts,  —  the  pictured  rocks  near  Taunton, 
although  a  spirited  illustration  of  one  page  of  our 
chronicles,  being  now  proved  to  be  sketches  by  later 
Scandinavian  Skalds,  less  than  eight  hundred  years 
old.  We  also  feel  obliged  to  deny  luv**imerit  accorded 
by  some  to  Bishop  Berkeley,  of  having  made  the  first 
discovery  of  America.  This  notion  of  some  rests  all 
its  weight  on  the  strength  of  those  lines,  "  Westward 
the  star  of  empire  takes  its  way."  But  those  were 
not  the  first  lines  that  were  carried  ashore  and  made 
fast  to  our  continent,  nor  this  the  earliest  star  which 
appeared  over  our  American  boards. 

Much  as  we  should  love,  in  the  interest  of  modern 
historical  research,  to  invent  a  new  discoverer  for 
America,  candor  compels  us  to  award  the  glory  still  to 
Christopher  Columbus.  Had  he  lived  three  hundred 
and  seventy-seven  years  later,  he  would  have  adver- 
tised for  a  partner  in  some  paper  of  wide  circulation ; 
but  not  having  that  advantage,  he  circulated  himself, 
offering  a  continent  at  private  sale  to  all  European 
nations  that  fronted  the  sunset.  But  all  declined 
with  thanks,  until  at  last,  as  is  well  known,  one 
Isabella,  a  Spanish  lady,  taken  with  the  speculation, 
became  a  silerrt  partner  in  the  business.  She  not 
only  furnished  the  capital,  and  took  a  high  interest 
in  the  result,  but  finally  reaped  nearly  all  the  profits, 
—  a  pleasant  example  of  woman's  rights  thoroughly 
enforced.  She  even  took  a  necklace  from  her  neck  to 
procure  funds  for  the  expedition;  and  with  this  ex- 


66       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED  STATES. 


LATER  DISCOVERIES  IN  AMERICA.  67 

ample  before  him,  her  associate  Ferdinand,  after  trying 
his  hand  on  several  Moors,  thought  that,  after  unclasp- 
ing from  the  neck  of  Columbus  "the  gem  of  the 
Antilles,"  he  could  substitute  a  chain  less  golden. 
Posterity,  however,  indignantly  breaking  the  metallic 
hasp,  has  clapped  the  iron  collar  back  on  the  neck  of 
the  selfish,  cunning,  and  thankless  Ferdinando. 

We  must  not  forget  to  mention  that  before  the  old 
pilot  could  get  his  project  to  stand,  he  had  raised  the 
price  of  eggs  throughout  Spain  by  placing  so  many  on 
their  own  poor  broken  heads.  For  this  destruction, 
however,  he  consoled  himself  with  the  maxim,  "all's 
well  that  ends  well."  He  carried  his  eggs  and  hopes 
to  England,  France,  Portugal,  and  Navarre ;  but  both 
were  kept  so  long  that  they  became  addled. 

A  heavy  fog  prevented  England  at  first  from*  seeing 
the  enterprise ;  but  after  the  discovery  of  real  land 
was  made,  she  lost  no  time  in  procuring  the  advan- 
tages of  it,  and  endeavored  to  secure  them  to  herself, 
by  allowing  several  vessels  to  be  outfitted  at  Bristol. 

These  vessels  were  not  built  by  Laird ;  but,  sailing 
away  on  the  blind  side  of  the  island,  succeeded  at  last 
in  boarding  the  continent,  and  exchanging  some  un- 
printed  religious  tracks  for  certain  other  tracts,  after- 
wards well  stamped  by  royal  authority. 

On  their  return,  the  promoters  of  this  missionary 
enterprise  built  a  handsome  church,  where  prayers 
were  daily  offered  for  many  years,  for  past  success, 
and  intercessions  made  for  the  interposition  of  the 
same  kind  Providence  for  new  exchanges  of  a  similar 
kind.  These  expeditions,  it  may  be  remarked,  have 
been  and  are  the  foundation  of  England's  greatness. 


68  THE   COMIC  HISTOBY  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 


LATER  DISCOVERIES  IN   AMERICA.  69 

—  her  church  and  her  trade ;  or  rather  to  name  them 
in  juster  order  and  according  to  her  own  estimate;  her 
trade  and  her  church.  The  Cabots,  father  and  son, 
will  ever  be  remembered  by  their  addition  to  the 
world's  wealth  by  the  discovery,  in  1497,  of  New- 
foundland. At  the  time  it  was  thought  to  be  a  story 
somewhat  fishy,  but  it  is  now  swallowed  without  any 
bones. 

The  Portuguese  were  less  fortunate,  their  ships  hav- 
ing got  somehow  entangled  in  the  line  in  crossing  it, 
they  were  obliged  to  cast  anchor  against  a  high  wind, 
which  as  usual  was  not  so  ill  as  not  to  benefit  their 
English  rivals.  What  became  of  these  ships  is  not 
positively  known  ;  a  glimpse  of  only  one  of  them  hav- 
ing since  been  obtained  in  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner. 
The  rest  may  have  drifted  northwards,  and  their 
masts  made  to  serve  to  splice  the  north  pole,  the  old 
one  having  become  somewhat  loose  from  being  so 
much  worked  about  by  meddlesome  navigators. 

Among  the  discoveries  in  America  which  Columbus 
did  not  make  we  may  enumerate  the  following  :  — 

First,  a  name  for  the  continent ;  an  omission  after- 
wards supplied  by  a  shabby  countryman  of  his,  whose 
own  name  we  will  not  perpetuate  by  mentioning  in 
this  history. 

Second,  iron-clads ;  although  he  did  come  across 
some  very  hard  characters,  whose  scaly  armor  history 
has  ever  since  been  mercilessly  denting  and  battering. 
Columbus  himself,  although  at  one  time  cased  in  iron, 
and  sent  home  on  a  trial  trip,  while  he  learned  the 
value  and  preciousness  of  metal  at  the  Spanish  court, 
failed  to  discover  its  property  to  float  him  across  seas 


70       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

successfully.  Nor  do  we  find  any  warrant  for  believ- 
ing that  he  was  the  discoverer  of, 

Third,  balsam  of  liverwort,  the  extract  of  buchu, 
Peruvian  hair-dye,  or  the  sozodont,  notwithstanding 
the  strenuous  assertions  to  the  contrary  of  the  candid 
proprietors  of  those  invaluable  preparations.  The 
only  extract  he  succeeded  in  making  was  a  promise  of 
honors,  never  performed,  although  highly  labelled  ;  and 
it  is  well  known  that  the  only  color  he  succeeded  in 
obtaining  in  America,  for  his  own  hair,  was  gray. 
From  the  ingredients  of  this  blanching  powder  he 
ultimately  died  himself  at  Valladolid. 

Fourth,  nor  is  there  any  better  foundation  for 
the  common  error,  that  he  was  the  discoverer  of  the 
Tammany  Society,  and  furnished  designs  and  colored 
drawings  for  the  wigwam,  in  which  the  Democratic 
braves  find  so  many  original  and  aboriginal  voters. 
Indian  polls,  from  which  the  hair  had  been  carefully 
removed,  he  did  see,  and  even  took  a  few  back  with 
him.  to  Spain ;  but  it  is  needless  to  say  that  these 
polling-places  were  not  the  exemplars  of  those  which 
Tammany  so  often  and  so  lovingly  pats  on  the  head. 

Fifth,  equally  erroneous  is  the  general  belief  that 
he  discovered  "Hail  Columbia,"  although  it  is  true 
that  he  got  enough  of  it,  in  the  sense  that  some  ill- 
educated  small  boys  now  use  that  phrase. 

Ponce  de  Leon,  following  up  the  discoveries  of 
Columbus,  landed  in  Florida,  in  1512,  and  endeav- 
ored to  find  there  a  fountain  possessing  the  properties 
of  giving  to  the  imbiber  perpetual  youth.  .Although 
he  did  not  succeed  in  this  quest,  it  seems  probable 
that  some  one  else  did,  for  it  is  well  known  that  sev- 


LATER  DISCOVERIES  IN  AMERICA. 


71 


72       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

eral  Americans,  such  as  Daniel  Webster,  John  C. 
Calhoun,  and  others,  have  lived  quite  too  long,  while 
other  distinguished  Americans,  as  Burr  and  others, 
have  manifested  in  a  very  lively  way  a  green  old  age, 
cutting  up  capers  which  none  but  very  young  people 
would  have  thought  of.  He  also  discovered  the  Dry 
Tortugas,  —  a  temperance  station  of  the  first  water, 
famous  as  the  habitation  of  Dr.  Mudd. 

A  few  years  later,  A.  D.  1517,  Mexico  was  unfor- 
tunately discovered,  and  from  that  time  to  the  pres- 
ent has  been  the  scene  of  constant  embroilments, 
beginning  with  the  broiling  of  Montezuma,  by  Cortez, 
and  ending  with  the  unhappy  stew  made  by  Maxi- 
milian for  himself.  Mexico  is  the  American  abattoir, 
—  the  general  slaughter-house  of  our  continent.  Ice 
for  the  preservation  of  the  quarters  of  her  victims, 
where  no  quarter  was  shown,  is  obtained  from  the  ele- 
vated plains  into  which  the  country  is  as  yet  insuf- 
ficiently broken  up. 

We  ought  to  mention  the  voyage,  in  1520,  of  a 
Portuguese,  Magellan  by  name,  who  touched  at  the 
Canaries  for  yellow  birds,  coasted  along  the  shores 
of  Brazil  in  search  of  other  golden  products,  but 
finally  brought  up  in  a  very  tight  place,  on  the  ex- 
treme southern  tip  of  our  western  globe ;  calling  the 
spot,  under  great  pressure,  the  Straits  of  Magellan. 

He  became  so  exhilarated,  however,  at  Cape  Horn, 
that  he  kept  on,  like  the  man  with  the  cork  leg,  and 
went  all  around  the  world,  being  its  first  circumventor, 
and  giving  the  first  proof  of  the  gyrating  effects  of  mix- 
ing liquors  with  water. 

De  Soto  first  chanced  upon  the  Mississippi  Eiver, 


LATER  DISCOVERIES  IN   AMERICA.'  73 

and,  in  1542,  was  flung  upon  it  with  all  his  heavy 
armor  on,  —  "a  sink-or-swim "  experiment,  which  re- 
sulted in  his  remaining  down  at  the  bottom. 

Diving  for  wrecks  has  since  become  for  divers  and 
diverse  reasons  common  in  that  turbulent  stream ;  but 
he  is  honored  as  the  great  diver ;  the  river  not  being 
strong  enough  to  get  him  up.  John  Law  afterwards 
tried  a  Mississippi  venture ;  but,  unlike  De  Soto,  he 
went  up,  and  never  came  down  again.  Both  De 
Leon  and  De  Soto  showed  true  American  enterprise 
and  energy  in  the  pursuit  of  gold.  Like  their  coun- 
tryman Cortez,  in  Mexico,  they  were,  however,  more 
desirous  of  discovering  metallic  placers,  and  extract- 
ing from  them  sudden  riches,  than  of  luring  by  patient 
industry  from  a  jealous  soil  its  hoarded  secrets  of 
cereal  wealth. 

On  the  north,  Cartier,  in  1534,  became  the  unhappy 
discoverer  of  the  Canadas,  and  other  out-lying,  uncov- 
ered, cold  regions,  afterwards  parcelled  out,  not  to  ice 
companies  like  the  Knickerbocker  and  others,  but  into 
viceroyalties.  These  freezing  places,  from  the  con- 
tinual stirring  about  in  them  of  such  contrary  ele- 
ments for  the  succeeding  century,  might  well  be  called 
the  ice-creameries  of  England  and  France. 

Champlain,  in  1603,  like  a  wise  man,  founded  Que- 
bec on  a  rock  ;  for  which  he  has  been  illy  requited  by 
being  called  the  father  of  the  French  settlements  in 
Canada. 

Sir  AValter  Ealeigh's  name  must  always  burn  bright- 
ly in  American  history,  for  his  discovery  of  a  smoking 
material  on  the  James  River.  But  his  fame  needs  no 
puffing  here,  although  his  reputation  became  some- 
4 


74  THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 


LATER  DISCOVERIES  IN  AMERICA.  75 

what  blown  before  his  death.  Another  important 
event  soon  after  occurred  in  connection  with  American 
discoveries.  A  Mayflower  drifted,  in  December,  across 
seas,  and  floating  against  Plymouth  Rock,  struck  its 
tiny  anchors  in  it,  and,  with  Yankee  enterprise,  climbed 
all  over  it,  covering  its  rugged  clefts  and  bare  surface 
with  a  mass  of  luxuriant  flowers,  with  which  also 
sprang  up  tangling  weed-growths,  all  of  which  have 
since  been  dried  and  attracted  great  attention,  much 
sneezing,  some  sneering,  and  great  use  of  handkerchiefs 
to  preserve  the  odor  of,  or  prevent  the  smell  of,  what 
has  penetrated  all  departments  of  American  history. 
The  last  discovery  which  we  shall  here  mention  was 
that  of  Hudson,  who  brought  to  light  the  benighted 
island  of  Manhattan,  then,  as  since,  infested  by  Woods 
and  other  poisonous  growths.  The  natives,  as  now, 
were  very  free  in  their  manners ;  staring  at  the  newly 
arrived,  and  taking  them  in  by  the  exhibition  of  trin- 
kets and  gilt  ornaments.  In  spite  of  the  sluggish 
airs  from  the  shores  of  Westchester  and  Dutchess,  the 
ships  of  Hudson  succeeded  in  reaching  Ehinebeck ; 
a  few  of  his  men  even  penetrating  to  the  dense  regions 
of  Albany. 


76       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 


CHAPTER  III. 

ON  THE  INDIAN  CHARACTER. 

Survey  of  Indian  Character  and  Lands.  —  Our  Pacific  Intentions  towards 
the  Indians.  —  The  Whites  better  read  than  the  Red  Men,  and  the 
Effects  of  Learning.  —  The  Pale  Complexion  of  their  Affairs.  —  Wet 
Blankets  thrown  over  their  other  Habits.  —  Different  Traits  discovered 
by  School-Girls  and  through  official  Spectacles.  —  Meaning  of  Indian 
Reservations.  —  Indian  Style  of  Dress  and  its  Conveniences.  —  Indian 
Names.  —  Examples  of  their  Happy  Application.  • 

NO  history  of  the  United  States  would  be  com- 
plete without  a  survey  of  the  character  of  the 
Indian ;  as  no  State  of  the  Union  is  acceptable  to  its 
inhabitants  without  a  survey  and  appropriation  of  his 
lands. 

Various  as  are  the  lights  in  which  the  former  may 
be  regarded,  there  is  but  one  light,  that  of  an  en- 
light-ened  self-interest,  with  which  the  latter  have 
been  treated.  The  speed  with  which  we  have  hurried 
the  brick-colored  races  towards  the  sun's  setting  is 
conclusive  proof  of  our  Pacific  intentions,  and  of  our 
dislike  to  unsettled  titles.  Red  as  is  the  color  of  the 
Indian,  to  this  complexion  do  all  his  tribes  come  at 
last,  —  a  pale  conviction  that  the  white  man  is  better 
read  than  they. 

The  chapter  of  our  discoveries  on  this  continent 
opens  with  the  Indian  in  the  foreground ;  and  the 
historian,  like  the  earliest  explorer,  is  brought  imme- 


ON   THE  INDIAN   CHARACTER.  77 

diately  face  to  face  with  him.  Unlike  the  explorer, 
however,  we  will  pause  long  enough  to  bury  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  estate  which  he  seized  and  we  occupy. 

Blankets,  often  very  wet,  have  been  thrown  over  the 
Indian ;  while  as  often  he  has  been  painted  so  thickly, 
and  feathered  so  profusely,  as  to  become  a  bird  of 
quite  another  color  from  that  of  our  North  American 
vulture.  Slow  in  learning  the  geography  of  the  race 
that  rides  him  down  as  on  a  pale  horse  evermore,  he 
has  acquired  the  name  of  but  one  of  our  streams,  that 
of  the  Firewater,  a  river  whose  dry  banks  seem  always 
to  divide  his  retreating  from  our  pursuing  frontier 
boundaries. 

Perhaps  we  cannot  give  a  more  variegated  notion 
of  the  different  aspects  under  which  the  Indian  char- 
acter is  viewed,  than  by  putting  it  in  an  American 
kaleidoscope,  and  there  giving  it  a  few  turns,  certain 
that  these  turns  will  not  be  more  curious  or  numer- 
ous than  their  owners'  fortunes. 

1.  The  Indian  character  as  viewed  in  schools  and 
colleges. 

Listen  to  an  average  specimen  from  the  pen  of  Miss 
Jemima  Letitia  Youngfancy,  —  her  most  pronounced 
effort  before  the  trustees  and  patrons  of  Rising  Hill 
Seminary. 

"  '  Lo !  the  poor  Indian,  whose  untutored  mind 
Sees  God  in  clouds,  and  hears  him  in  the  wind.' 

LAMENTATIONS  or  SHAKESPEARE. 

"  No  subject  is  of  greater  importance  to  the  well- 
being  of  our  race  than  a  proper  estimate  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  red  man.  Injustice  here  is  more  deplor- 
able, since  it  involves  the  historic  position  of  a  race 


78      THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

once  lords  of  all  this  continent,  now  fast  dwindling 
away,  not  only  out  of  physical  existence,  but  from  the 
realms  of  discriminating  praise.  His  has  been  the 
misfortune  to  be  despoiled,  not  simply  of  the  bosky 
inheritance  of  fair  fields  and  boundless  domains,  where 
his  ancestors  roamed  as  free  as  the  winds  that  sweep 
over  the  breezy  sierras  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  but 
of  the  justice  which  pleads  before  the  tribunal  of  pos- 
terity for  rights  withheld  and  wrongs  inflicted.  Not 
content  to  pursue  his  retreating  and  emaciated  foot- 
steps into  the  tomb,  where  his  poor  body  is  scarcely 
allowed  to  moulder  away  in  peace,  amid  the  imple- 
ments and  trophies  of  the  chase,  the  white  man,  as 
voracious  as  the  prairie  wolves,  which  whet  their  sharp 
fangs  against  the  rocky  bases  that  prop  up  the  giant 
Cordilleras  of  our  beloved  land,  has  denied  to  him 
those  monumental  rights  with  which  even  savages 
adorn  the  last  resting-places  of  their  braves,  —  the 
trophied  inscriptions  carved  in  the  enduring  language 
in  which  Virgil  sang  and  Tully  burned,  and  in  which 
Menander,  prophetic  of  our  Transatlantic  greatness, 
babbled  to  the  dull  ears  of  a  Eoman  race,  which 
recked  not  of  that  '  proud  stoic  of  the  woods,'  who, 
in  life  a  victim  of  wrong,  at  death  folds  himself  to 
his  solemn  sleep,  in  the  language  of  the  greatest  of 
our  living  poets, 

4  Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  conch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams,' 

but  who,  also,  in  the  apt  words  of  the  same  rapt  min- 
strel, 

'  Like  Trath  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again,  — 
The  eternal  years  of  God  are  theirs.'  " 


ON   THE  INDIAN   CHARACTER.  79 

While  the  waves  of  applause  which  ripple  around  this 
popular  and  characteristic  rhapsody,  grow  calm  against 
the  solid  shores  of  historic  truth,  we  turn  to  another 
American  view  equally  characteristic. 

2.  The  Indian  character  as  seen  through  official  spec- 
tacles. Extract  from  the  Report  of  the  Secretary  of 
the  Interior :  — 

"  The  beneficent  policy  of  repression,  steadily  pur- 
sued by  our  government  towards  the  Indian  tribes 
still  surviving,  cannot  fail  to  strike  every  one  but 
themselves.  While  sentimental  Christianity  continues 
to  dwell  upon  the  rapid  extinguishment  of  their  tribes, 
the  archives  of  this  department  bear  gratifying  wit- 
ness to  the  more  rapid  extinguishment  of  their  titles. 

"  There  now  remain  in  our  borders  —  which  were,  it 
must  be  admitted,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  once 
theirs  —  but  about  three  hundred  thousand  of  these 
nomad  wanderers.  Our  people  must  feel  an  especial 
gratification  in  the  proud  reflection,  that  it  is  their 
bounty  which,  now  reaching  forth  the  comforts  of  our 
abundance  to  these  remnants  of  tribes,  supplies  at  the 
reasonable  rate  of  some  $  10.15  per  caput,  the  wants 
of  such  as  are  spared  by  our  efficient  and  active  army 
corps  of  Indian  destructives. 

"  This  bounty  is  distributed  by  honest  agents,  who 
never  fail,  while  dispensing  it,  to  impress  upon  the 
recipients  a  proper  regard  for  the  moral  suasion  of  our 
well-mounted  rifles.  The  small  commissions  reserved 
from  these  treaty-stipulated  funds,  by  these  agents,  is 
too  American  not  to  be  recognized  with  patriotic 
pride  ;  and  the  especial  thanks  of  Congress  are  due  to 
these  self-denying  distributers  for  the  amount  which 

V 


80       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

they  kindly  leave  to  be  disseminated  among  the  in- 
tended beneficiaries. 

"There  is  a  natural  jealousy  among  our  people  in 
those  States  and  Territories  where  former  laws  inju- 
diciously, but,  as  it  fortunately  proves,  unsuccessfully 
located  these  Indian  remnants,  against  the  continuous 
occupation  of  tracts  of  lands  called  reservations/ 
to  which  they  have  been  from  time  to  time  removed. 
I  cannot  too  strongly  recommend  that  this  jealousy 
and  acquisitiveness  be  duly  respected,  and  new  reser- 
vations somewhere  be  speedily  provided.  Both  Provi- 
dence and  our  need  of  their  territory  plainly  mark  the 
Indians  as  the  American  Ishmaelites,  against  whom 
everybody's  hand  is  raised,  and  whose  shifting  tent 
can  only  be  steadied  up  permanently  against  the  sun- 
set on  the  Pacific  Ocean." 

Some  people  seem  to  think  that  the  Indian  was 
created  to  keep  before  us  a  decollete  style  of  dress, 
adapted  to  the  freedom  of  our  institutions,  —  a  trav- 
eller's costume,  most  convenient  for  the  administra- 
tion of  medical  assistance,  in  case  of  such  railroad 
divertisements  and  steamboat  pyrotechnic  displays  as 
often  enliven  our  journeyings. 

Others  look  upon  the  preservation  of  these  remnants 
as  providential  fields  for  the  employment  of  the  pa- 
tience of  domestic  missionaries.  Young  ladies  con- 
template them  as  the  only  living  representatives  of 
mythological  Loves,  the  sole  heirs  to  the  bow  and 
arrow.  Others  still  admire  them  as  our  only  legend- 
ary and  poetic  creations  ;  the  only  ghostly  figures  that 
creep  weirdly  through  our  sharp-set  American  qua- 
drilles. 


ON  THE  INDIAN   CHARACTER. 


81 


I) 


82       THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

But  while  such  discordant  notions  rasp  the  Ameri- 
can ear  and  conscience  about  their  predecessors,  there 
is  a  mode  of  hushing  up  all  these  family  jars ;  one 
which  seems  to  have  been  adopted  in  all  ages,  from 
the  time  of  Joshua  the  son  of  Nun,  down  to  the  Irish 
wakes  of  our  time,  namely,  to  drown  them  all  in  the 
jubilant  music  procured  and  paid  for  at  the  expense 
of  the  estate  to  be  divided  up. 

A  few  words  in  regard  to  Indian  names.  An  affec- 
tionate and  grateful  regard  for  the  painted  races,  which 
will  soon  be  seen  only  in  the  picture-galleries  and 
books  of  colored  engravings,  has  sought  to  sow  a  crop 
of  Indian  names  over  our  lakes,  rivers,  mountains,  and 
towns.  Unfortunately  we  have  succeeded  in  keeping 
scarcely  enough  for  seed.  But  one  State  has  borrowed 
the  name  of  the  Indian  himself,  —  Indian-ah  ?  —  she 
spelling  it,  however,  in  an  un-English  way,  without 
a  h,  as  if  she  had  said, 

"  O,  breathe  not  his  name." 

The  application  of  some  of  these  names  has  been 
singularly  felicitous,  as  Sing-Sing,  where  the  State 
guests  attempt  no  musical  flights,  but  are  made  to 
hum  quite  another  tune,  if  not  to  hush  up  altogether ; 
Miss-ouri,  whose  ill-fated  union  in  our  Federal  family 
has  been  attended  with  such  left-handed  rights, — 
State  rights,  Fanny  Wrights,  and,  for  a  long  time  in 
Kansas,  conflicting  rights ;  Minnehaha,  whose  ringing 
laugh  is  during  so  long  a  portion  of  the  year  frozen  in 
her  soft  throat ;  Kan-sas,  suggestive  of  her  capacity 
for  billingsgate  and  free  use  of  abusive  language ;  Ore- 
gon, and  yet  inviting  emigrants  to  her  valuable  mines 


ON  THE  INDIAN   CHARACTER.  83 

while  she  laughs  a  cunning  laugh  under  the  protect- 
ing cap  of  Mount  Hood ;  Wy-an-dot  Kiver,  as  if  it  had 
come  to  a  sort  of  rocky  comma,  or  interrupting  ledge, 
over  which  it  was  pausing  a  moment  for  breath  to 
take  a  hop-and-skip-and-carry-one  overy  leap  ;  Pot-to- 
wat-o-my  River,  seeming  like  a  whole  family  council 
around  a  skillet  steaming  over  a  fire,  while  the  car- 
rotty-headed  mother  was  slightly  walloping  the  young- 
est of  the  party  for  asking  some  improper  question; 
Pawn-ee  Fork,  reminding  one  of  those  old-clothes  shops 
kept  by  U.  S.,  where  the  unsuspecting  and  improvi- 
dent Indian,  always  in  want,  might  be  tempted  to 
pledge  his  wild  lands  for  a  little  ready  cash,  or  a 
silver  fork,  or  blue  trinket ;  Man-hat-tan,  as  if  to 
perpetuate  the  fact  of  the  great  head  quality  of  the 
white  man  in  dealing  with  the  dusky  ones  for  the 
purchase  of  the  little  island  that  carries  as  its  name,  a 
cover  for  the  little  transaction  which  transferred  twenty- 
four  dollars  to  the  one,  for  the  fourteen  miles  of  real 
estate  sandwiched  between  the  North  and  East  Rivers ; 
Winne-bago,  which  sets  one  sneezing  a  coltish  sneeze 
even  at  the  head- waters  of  the  Missis-sippi,  and  in  her 
matronly  presence;  and  a  thousand  other  spicy  abo- 
riginal condiments,  sprinkled,  like  pepper  and  salt 
over  a  luscious  ham,  over  our  continent,  to  make  it 
more  piquant  and  relishable  in  the  taking. 


BOOK    SECOND. 


SETTLEMENTS  AND  COLONIES. 


1607  TO  1775. 


"  And  vaguely  here, 
Through  the  dim  mists  that  crowd  the  atmosphere, 
We  draw  the  outlines  of  weird  figures  cast 
In  shadows  on  the  background  of  the  past" 

LONGFELLOW'S  "  New  England  Tragedie$." 


"  'T  is  pleasant  through  the  loopholes  of  retreat 
To  peep  at  such  a  world." 

COWPER. 


CHAPTER   I. 


OF  AMERICAN  SETTLEMENTS  GENERALLY. 

Some  American  Grounds,  like  Coffee,  unsettled.  —  Some  Settlements  pulled 
up  by  the  Roots;  others  chilled  by  Fever  and  Ague.  —  Moist  Soils 
objected  to  except  by  Doctors.  —  Unexpected  Crops  of  Tomahawks 
from  Wheat  sown.  —  Settlements  in  America  because  of  the  Imprac- 
ticability of  making  any  at  Home  with  Creditors.  —  Wild  Oats  sown  be- 
tween thirty-fourth  and  thirty-eighth  Parallels.  —  Frequent  Settlements 
make  long  Friends.  —  Settlements  of  Old  Tavern  Scores  hi  Chalky 
Districts.  —  Religious  Squalls  prostrate  some  Plantations. — Indian 
Tempests  uproot  others.  —  Growth  of  Virginia,  although  Queen  Eliza- 
beth a  femme  sole.  —  Clergymen's  Settlements.  —  Brides  unsettled.  — 
Drake  around  the  World. 

f^LEEGYMEN'Sdis- 
V_^  courses,  like  grape 
clusters,  usually  show 
two  sides,  —  a  positive 
or  sunny   one   and   a 
negative  or  shady  one. 
Desirous   of   bring- 
ing    out    the    native 
bunches   of    our    his- 
tory    more      roundly 
against  the  leafy  back- 
ground of  its  verdant 
youth,    we    begin    by 
showing       alternating 
And  first  the  negative,  or  shady 


THE  FIRST  YEAR'S  CROP  IN  THE  NEW 
SETTLEMENTS. 


merits  and  demerits, 
side. 


88       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

The  first  damp  observation  shows  that  many  parts 
of  America  have  never  been  settled  at  all.  In  certain 
districts,  grounds  are  found,  as  in  coffee,  unsettled ;  and 
good  grounds  exist  for  this,  and,  contradictory  as  it 
may  seem,  these  are  generally  discovered  in  poor  water. 

In  some  cases,  like  those  of  Gosnold,  Kaleigh,  De 
La  Eoche,  and  others,  attempts  were  made,  and  settle- 
ments actually  planted,  which  seemed  for  a  time  to 
thrive ;  but  the  impatient  planters,  like  curious  boys, 
were  so  desirous  of  ascertaining  how  much  their 
plants  had  grown,  that  they  pulled  them  up  to  look 
at  the  roots,  —  an  inspection  which  the  plants  re- 
sented by  sulking  and  dying  out.  In  other  instances, 
fever  and  ague  was  mixed  up  with  the  first  seed,  and 
this  had  a  chilling  effect  upon  the  husbandmen. 

Indeed,  a  hard  fight  is  still  going  on  in  many  parts 
of  the  country  with  this  strong  unsettler,  the  record 
of  whose  assaults  and  charges  is  found  in  the  apothe- 
cary shops  and  doctors'  offices.  These  highly  colored 
little  stockades  and  forts  with  the  rosy-hued  land- 
offices  for  the  sale  of  the  most  desirable  real  estate, 
with  water-lots  running  in  front  of  them,  often  indeed 
comprise  the  entire  settlement. 

In  some  instances,  the  character  of  the  soil  inter- 
fered seriously  with  any  permanent  occupation  of  the 
place.  People  who  had  no  objection  to  watered  silks, 
or  watered  paper,  entertained,  it  has  been  found,  well- 
grounded  reasons  for  not  liking  an  oozy  surface,  para- 
graphed between  watery  curves,  and  punctuated  with 
bullfrogs  and  other  pointed  characters.  Some  of  the 
early  settlers  did  venture  upon  these  maritime  risks ; 
but  policy,  or  no  policy,  they  ended  their  speculations 


OF  AMERICAN  SETTLEMENTS  GENERALLY.     89 

under  weeping  willows,  with  Keat-like  epitaphs  over 
them,  — 

"  Here  lies  one  whose  name  was  writ  in  water." 

Oftentimes,  even  where  the  soil  was  rich,  the  early 
settler  became  discouraged  by  the  unexpected  crops 
he  obtained.  Planting  wheat,  he  found  that  it  came" 
up  a  rank  growth  of  Indian  corn,  tasselled  out  into 
tomahawks  or  sharp-pointed  arrows,  instead  of  the 
silken  tufts  which  he  had  a  right  to  look  for  in  the 
order  of  nature.  This  result  frequently  took  place  in 
the  valleys  of  the  Connecticut  and  Mohawk,  along  the 
banks  of  the  Mystic  Eiver,  and  upon  the  otherwise 
pleasant  slopes  overlooking  Narragansett  Bay. 

In  several  instances,  too,  as  in  the  case  of  the  colo- 
nists shipped  by  the  council  of  the  Plymouth  Com- 
pany, the  seed  thus  sent  was  taken  from  heaps  of  full- 
grown  vicious  specimens,  to  be  found  only  in  London, 
or  other  large  places,  instead  of  being  judiciously 
selected  from  healthy  young  stocks.  Such  seed,  of 
course,  not  only  became  sour  and  fermented,  but  this 
fermentation  spoiled  whatever  good  grain  was  found 
accidentally  mixed  with  it.  This  kind  of  crop  was 
even  worse  than  that  of  the  tomahawks  or  arrows. 
Of  course,  these  penal  crops  were  short-lived.  The 
profligate  and  dissolute  soon  died  in  the  virtuous  soli- 
tudes in  which  they  had  no  previous  experience  at 
home  to  recall  and  compare ;  and  escaped  as  soon  as 
possible  from  settlements  whose  greatest  crime,  in 
their  eyes,  was  that  in  them  they  could  make  no  scores 
long  enough  to  be  worth  running  away  from. 

Some  attempted  settlements  here,  because  they  could 
not  succeed  in  making  any  with  their  creditors  at 


90       THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

home.  Of  this  class,  many  were  found  in  the  bounds 
of  the  London  Company,  scraped  up  under  the  charter 
of  James  I.,  granted  in  1606,  —  a  company  which 
sowed  their  wild  oats  between  the  thirty-fourth  and 
thirty-eighth  parallels  of  latitude,  but  whose  doings,  un- 
doings, and  misdoings  had  no  parallel  whatever.  Some 
of  this  seed,  lying  dormant,  sprouted  up  in  these  regions 
as  late  as  1861,  and  covered  the  Carolinas  and  Virginia 
with  a  crop  worse  than  teazles  or  Canada  thistles. 

The  maxim  that  "  frequent  settlements  make  long 
friends,"  was  doubly  verified  along  the  New  England 
coast,  where  the  security  of  the  settler  could  only  be 
maintained  by  short  and  decisive  footings-up  of  and 
with  the  breech -less  and  treaty-breaking  Picts  of  our 
history,  or  by  such  often-planted  gatherings  as  would 
prevent  their  attempts  to  run  up  a  score. 

It  is  almost  needless  to  say  that  in  all  the  regions 
from  the  Penobscot  Eiver  to  St.  Augustine,  under  all 
the  various  charters,  and  among  all  classes  of  colonists, 
English,  Dutch,  Swedish,  Spanish,  or  Huguenot,  set- 
tlements were  often  made  on  the  walls  and  behind  the 
doors  of  taverns,  where  the  weekly  score  was  kept,  — 
a  geological  district  mapped  out  in  a  chalk  formation, 
the  size  of  which  seemed  always  to  astonish  the  set- 
tler whenever  his  attention  was  particularly  invited 
to  it.  Whatever  his  own  fields  bore,  here  the  crop 
was  unfailing ;  or  rather  its  growth  was  generally  in 
the  inverse  ratio  to  that  of  his  wheat  or  tobacco 
patch. 

In  a  few  instances  settlements,  fairly  and  perma- 
nently made  were  suddenly  uprooted  by  sudden  squalls 
or  tempests,  which,  razing  the  hair  from  the  heads  of 


OF   AMERICAN  SETTLEMENTS   GENERALLY.  91 

the  colonists,  still,  as  we  read  of  their  ferocity  and 
fury,  raise  our  own.  Such  was  the  scalping-party  that 
swept  over  Deerfield,  the  savage  whirlwind  down  the 
valley  of  the  Wyoming,  and  the  rapid  gust  that  licked 
up  the  little  settlement  of  Cherry  Valley. 

Now  and  then  also  occurred  a  religious  tornado, 
which  prostrated  whole  patches  of  plantations,  and 
which,  at  one  time,  threatened  to  become  the  prevail- 
ing winds  of  our  American  continent,  taking  the  place 
even  of  our  strong  and  steadily  blowing  trade-winds. 
Thus  a  company  of  French  Huguenots,  sent  out  in 
1565,  by  Admiral  Coligni,  and  planted  in  Florida, 
were  overwhelmed  by  a  party  of  Spaniards,  under 
Melendez,  who,  after  murdering  them  all,  placed  over 
their  mutilated  bodies  this  inscription  :  "  We  do  this 
not  as  unto  Frenchmen,  but  as  unto  heretics."  Which 
was  the  heretical  part  thus  mercilessly  dealt  with,  and 
which  the  French  portion  not  intended  to  be  harmed, 
cotemporary  accounts  do  not  furnish  us  with  materials 
sufficient  to  enable  us  to  discriminate.  They  do  tell 
us,  however,  that  this  then  fashionable  mode  of  treat- 
ing religious  convictions  was  imitated  by  the  country- 
men of  the  French,  acting  upon  what  was  then  thought 
to  be  the  proper  interpretation  of  the  merciful  and 
benign  principles  of  The  Book,  viz.,  "  doing  unto  oth- 
ers, what  they  do  unto  you  "  ;  for  soon  after  De  Gourges, 
sailing  from  France  with  three  ships,  formed  a  surprise 
party  to  two  Spanish  forts,  and  after  executing  a 
Spanish  dance  with  the  garrison,  took  them  out  and 
hung  them  up  in  the  trees  like  dried  fruit ;  and  fear- 
ing that  the  specimens  might  be  mistaken,  left  above 
them  the  recipe,  as  follows :  "  I  do  this  not  as  unto 


92       THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

Spaniards,  or  mariners,  but  as  unto  traitors,  robbers, 
and  murderers." 

Whether  the  Spaniards  thus  done  for  properly  ap- 
preciated the  delicate  discrimination,  we  are  not  in- 
formed. 

To  the  statistician  it  may  be  of  interest  to  know  that 
of  the  abortive  attempts  at  settlements  within  the 
present  limits  of  the  United  States,  six  were  made  by 
the  English,  one  by  the  Swedes,  two  by  Spaniards,  and 
two  by  the  French.  Lovers  of  that  branch  of  political 
history  will  be  able  to  wring  out  of  these  figures  re- 
sults more  extraordinary  than  any  we  can  torture 
them  into. 

On  the  whole,  however,  notwithstanding  all  draw- 
backs and  misfortunes,  the  settlements  gained  steadily 
on  the  Indians,  fever  and  ague,  the  cold  and  exposure, 
tomahawks,  tavern-keepers,  and  surprise  parties.  Some 
marriages  took  place,  but  no  settlements  were  made  on 
the  bride,  except  perhaps,  in  the  course  of  time,  her 
old  father-in-law  and  mother-in-law,  who  were  fortu- 
nate if  they  brought  with  them,  as  addition  to  her 
scanty  stock,  two  whole  empty  trunks,  their  own. 
Queen  Elizabeth  did  everything  to  promote  the  growth 
of  population  in  her  favorite  colony  of  Virginia,  except 
to  furnish  them  with  a  personal  example ;  but  to  make 
up  for  this  omission,  she  sent  out  some  Episcopal 
clergymen,  provided  with  surplice  and  stole,  and  with 
licenses  to  marry.  These  obtained  settlements  for 
themselves,  and  zealously  stimulated  them  in  others. 

As  soon  as  the  settlements  began  fairly  to  demon- 
strate that  they  would  succeed,  they  were  of  course 
vigorously  patronized,  and  in  fact  "  encumbered  with 


OF  AMERICAN   SETTLEMENTS   GENERALLY.  93 

help."  Plenty  of  people  there  were  then  who  at  first, 
at  the  bare  mention  of  American  settlements,  had 
placed  their  thumbs  to  their  noses,  and  irreverently 
given  their  fingers  a  quick  gyratory  motion  in  the  air, 
but  who  now  came  forward  and  claimed  the  merit  of 
having  always  been  the  especial  friends  of  the  colo- 
nists, and  pointed,  like  the  veiy  lieutenants  and  aid-de- 
camps of  General  Success,  to  their  uniformly  enter- 
tained convictions,  triumphantly  exclaiming,  "  Did  we 
not  always  tell  you  so  ? "  As  candid  historians,  we 
cannot  withhold  our  pencils  from  sketching  the  por- 
traits of  these  burly  friends  of  the  early  years  of 
America ;  these  large-hearted  souls,  who,  sitting  at 
home  over  their  comfortable  cannel-coal  fires,  piled 
cheerily  up  with  the  dividends  from  the  stock  of  some 
of  the  companies  formed  for  planting  these  shores, 
which  they  would  not  touch  until  it  got  up  to  par, 
and  who  then,  fearing  that  their  attachments  might 
not  be  appreciated,  cried  out  their  undeviating  devo- 
tion in  voices  that  fairly  drowned  all  others. 

From  these  characters,  which  only  shine  in  the 
full  noonday  of  prosperity,  we  gladly  turn  to  Sir 
Francis  Drake,  who,  as  early  as  1586,  did  not  hesitate 
to  divide  his  last  crust  with  the  feeble  and  struggling 
colony  of  Eoanoke  Island,  succoring  them  by  timely 
aid,  and  not  sucking  from  them  the  little  feeble 
strength  which  short  crops  and  long  watchings  against 
wary  foes  had  left  them.  Although  born  in  England, 
Drake  had  a  soul  which  compassed  the  world,  around 
whose  waist  he  passed  the  second  girdle  which  had 
ever  belted  it. 


94       THE  COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 


CHAPTEE  II. 

THE  SETTLEMENTS  OF  VIRGINIA,  DELAWARE,  MARYLAND, 
THE  CAROLINAS,  AND  GEORGIA. 

Colored  Views  whitened.  —  Blue  Ridges  and  Black  Welts  in  Virginia.  — 
Virginia,  smothered  up  in  Infancy  by  Charters,  survives  Royal  nursing. 

—  Her  Vigilance  against  her  Suitors.  —  Cotton  introduced.  —  How  the 
World  managed  previously.  —  Charles  I.  and  his  numerous  Autographs. 

—  Georgia  and  Oglethorpe.  —  Charleston  set  up.  —  A  Point  on  Old  Point 
Comfort.  —  Tobacco  first  piped  about.  —  Unmarried  Girls  as  Articles  of 
Import.  —  Estimated  in,  if  not  by,  Pounds.  —  The  Fancy  Constitution  of 
John  Locke  for  North  Carolina.  —  Its  own  Length,  but  Short  Life.  — 
South  Carolina  Rivers  do  not  run  up.  —  Popular  Errors  corrected.  — 
John  Wesley.  —  Singular  Effect  of  his  Preaching  on  the  Indians.  —  Mary- 
land as  a  Duck  of  a  Colony  canvassed. 


OLORED  views  are  too  apt  to  be  given  and  taken 
of  these  six  States,  shading  down  from  the  dead 
African  black,  through  every  gradation  of  tint,  to  a 
hue  almost  unimpeach-ably  Caucasian. 

It  is  true  that  Virginia  carried  on  her  bosom  a  Blue 
Ridge,  as  in  later  times  some  of  her  progeny  have 
borne  on  their  backs  darker  ridges  ;  but  until  1620  no 
welts  of  the  latter  character  stood  out  on  her  fair  shoul- 
ders ;  and  these,  be  it  said  to  his  shame,  were  raised 
by  the  master  of  a  Dutch  man-of-war  who,  on  the 
very  day  in  August  that  the  Pilgrim  party  embarked  in 
the  Mayflower,  at  Delft-Haven,  in  his  own  country, 
landed  twenty  negroes  for  sale  on  the  banks  of  the 
James  River,  leaving  a  black  mark  which  two  hundred 
and  forty-five  years  have  barely  succeeded  in  washing 
3* 


96       THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

out.  In  her  very  cradle,  in  1606,  Virginia  was  loaded 
down  and  half  smothered  with  that  royal  blanket,  a 
charter.  Not  content  with  this  comforter,  the  royal 
nurses  from  London  kept  piling  other  blankets  of  the 
same  kind  upon  the  vigorous  infant,  and  because  it 
was  vigorous,  until  within  the  short  space  of  fourteen 
years  no  less  than  four  were  heaped  upon  her.  These 
were  far  from  being  counter-panes,  but  on  the  con- 
trary served  in  that  warm  climate  to  distress  the 
child,  and  eventually  to  bring  out  eruptions.  Under 
the  second  of  these,  in  1609,  Maryland  was  tucked  up 
in  the  same  bed  with  Virginia  ;  but  in  1621,  not  find- 
ing the  company  agreeable,  she  was  taken  out  by  Lord 
Baltimore,  and  put  into  a  pleasant  and  comfortable 
trundle-bed  of  her  own ;  the  chivalrous  young  lord 
naming  the  baby  after  Henrietta  Maria,  wife  of 
Charles  I.,  and  daughter  of  the  gallant  Henry  of 
Navarre,  afterwards  Henry  IV.  of  France.  The  year 
1621  was  emphasized  in.  the  infant  settlement  of 
Virginia  by  the  introduction  of  cotton  and  the  first 
written  constitution, —  two  prolific  American  seeds 
that  have  each  borne  large  harvests.  Considering  the 
varied  uses  to  which  the  former  is  now  applied  in 
clothing  human  bodies  and  habitations,  and  the  latter 
in  padding  political  addresses  and  lawsuits,  we  are 
puzzled  to  conceive  how  the  world  got  on,  and  espe- 
cially how  congressmen  managed  to  make  speeches,  or 
lawyers  to  live,  prior  to  those  great  discoveries,  —  dis- 
coveries more  important  in  some  aspects  than  those  of 
iron,  the  Reformation,  Illinois  divorces,  gunpowder, 
sti-ain,  the  doctrine  of  legal  insanity,  Braudreth's 
pills,  and  others,  without  which  of  course  no  well- 


THE   SETTLEMENTS   OF   VIRGINIA,  ETC.  97 

ordered     or    well  -  digesting    family    can    long   pro- 
ceed. 

Seven  years  later  Charles  I.  contracted  to  take  the 
entire  tobacco  crop  of  Virginia;  hoping  probably  by 
the  free  use  of  this  narcotic  to  drug  the  alarmed  politi- 
cal conscience  of  England. 

The  ship  that  took  the  first  Maryland  emigrants  up 
the  Potomac  to  their  new  settlement  was  called  the 
Ark  and  the  Dove,  and  carried  in  its  beak  the  olive- 
branch  of  religious  toleration. 

In  1630,  the  same  liberality  in  disposing  of  broad 
strips  of  American  territory  was  shown  by  King 
Charles  I.  in  granting  a  deed,  embracing  North  Caro- 
lina, South  Carolina,  and  Georgia,  to  Sir  Robert  Heath ; 
but  in  1663  his  son,  the  second  Charles,  desirous  of 
improving  his  own  handwriting,  which  had  been  some- 
what neglected  from  his  eighth  year,  in  consequence 
of  the  necessarily  active  business  life  Cromwell  had 
obliged  him  to  lead,  put  his  signature,  early  one  foggy 
morning,  to  a  paper  which  somebody  laid  in  his  way, 
and  which,  when  brought  out  to  the  light,  proved  to  be 
a  grant  to  Lord  Clarendon  and  several  other  pleasant, 
gentlemanly  fellows,  of  this  same  small  North  Ameri- 
can farm.  This  select  little  knot  of  farmers,  after 
building  a  few  barns  on  their  farm,  discovered  that  it 
was  not  large  enough  for  their  purposes.  Like  the 
Irishman  who  wanted  an  additional  sixpence  to  drink 
the  health  of  the  gentleman  who  had  generously  given 
him  a  five-dollar  bill,  they  desired  a  back  field  to 
dump  manure  on ;  and  they  finally  obtained  a  second 
autograph  from  the  obliging  Charles  to  a  bit  of  paper, 
allowing  them  to  use  forever  the  small  patch  lying 
5  G 


98       THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

westward  to  the  Pacific.     The  farm  was  kept  together 
until  1729,  when  it  was  divided  up  by  George  II.  into 
two  parts,  called  North  and  South  Carolina ;  the  latter 
half  being,  three  years  later,  again  split  into  two,  and 
the  lower  part  named,  after  the  burly  old  landlord, 
Georgia.      Nearly   fifty  years,   however,   before    this 
division,  upon  a  tongue  of  land  called  Oyster  Point, 
and  bivalved  between  the  Ashley  and  Cooper  Kivers, 
Charleston  was  first  set  upon  its  uneasy  foundations. 
Whether  affected  by  the  contiguity  of  Folly  Island,  by 
the  use  of  too  much  pepper  —  always  cheap  in  warm 
regions  —  upon  the  native  oysters,  or  whether  unduly 
exhilarated  by  too  exclusive  a  contemplation  of  the 
cotton  seed,  which  seems  to  have  enlarged  its  dilated 
and  dilating  pupils,  the  place,  although  but  seven  feet 
above  high  tide,  has  always  been  given  to  high  notions, 
and  subject  to  a  certain  vertigo.     An  admirable  in- 
gredient, the  Protestant  Huguenot  element,  tossed  out 
of  France  by  the  revoked  edict  of  Nantes,  was  infused 
into  the  young  settlement  of  South  Carolina  in  1685. 
The  plant  of  liberty,  however,  early  struck  its  anchor- 
ing roots  close  by  the  side  of  the  cotton-plant ;  and 
although  the  governors,  sent  out  by  the  royal  proprie- 
tors from  England,  continually  hacked  into  its  smooth 
trunk,  it  still  grew  apace,  and  its  bracing  tonic  odors 
filled  not  only  the  regions  watered  by  the  Santee  and 
Pedee,  but  were  wafted  northwards  and  over  the  sister 
Colonies. 

Although  it  is  said  that  "  old  Virginny  never  tires," 
it  must  have  been  because  she  had  a  robust  constitu- 
tion, for  a  busier  body  never  existed.  Always  resist- 
ing the  attempts  made  by  the  profligate  royal  gover- 


THE  SETTLEMENTS   OF   VIRGINIA,   ETC.  99 

nors  upon  her  virginity,  she  had  to  watch  them,  day 
and  night,  for  fear  that  they  would  steal  her  hard 
earnings  and  run  away  with  them.  In  fact,  during 
the  sixty  years  that  succeeded  her  birth  at  Jamestown, 
in  1606,  she  was  constantly  on  the  alert,  putting  up 
scarecrows  on  her  cornfields,  and  notices  of  spring- 
guns,  to  warn  away  intruders ;  but  these,  so  far  from 
frightening  away,  only  attracted  the  curious  bills  of 
the  Indians.  She  was  also  forced  to  hold  fast  with 
might  and  main  to  the  scanty  wardrobe  brought  out 
by  her  from  England,  and  with  which  those  dissolute 
fellows,  the  young,  titled,  rakish,  good-for-nothing 
overseers,  were  always  taking  liberties.  Fortunately 
for  her,  as  well  as  her  sisters,  the  two  Carolinas  and 
Georgia,  her  shoulders  were  well  covered  by  capes,  so 
securely  fastened  on  that  they  could  not  be  snatched 
away,  and  their  charms  exposed  to  the  rude  stare  or 
prying  curiosity  of  idle  visitors  from  France  and  Eng- 
land, and  even  from  staid,  sober  Holland.  And  we 
here  take  the  opportunity  of  repelling  the  slander  so 
often  circulated  upon  Virginia,  that  she  is  "  the  mother 
of  States,"  —  an  aspersion  which,  if  true,  would  stain 
her  virgin  fame,  and  leave  a  bar  sinister  across  the 
shields  of  the  States  thus  born  out  of  wedlock. 

The  first  suitor  for  the  budding  affections  of  the 
youthful  Georgia,  or  Georgiana,  although  bearing  the 
suspicious  name  of  Ogle-thorpe,  proved  to  be  a  man 
of  honorable  intentions,  high-minded,  and  in  every 
respect  faithful  to  his  ardent  vows,  —  a  constant  mate 
in  all  her  joys  and  trials  during  his  residence  on  the 
Savannah  Kiver,  from  1732  to  1743.  Virginia's  royal 
lovers,  on  the  contrary,  although  always  protesting 


100     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

their  good  intentions,  were  almost  uniformly  faithless. 
The  last  one  bore  the  ill-omened,  but  appropriate 
name  of  Dun-more.  He  was  very  importunate,  and  in 
every  way  attempted  to  get  her  to  make  over  her  then 
valuable  property  to  him,  but  in  vain ;  and  at  last  so 
mercenary  did  he  become,  and  so  disagreeable  did  he 
make  himself,  that  she  was  obliged  to  show  him  the 
door. 

The  spirited  damsel  was  always  plucky,  and  soon 
after  this  domestic  difficulty  made  up  her  mind  to  be 
wholly  independent,  and  so  in  fact  publicly  gave  out 
to  the  whole  world,  saying  that  "  she  did  n't  care  who 
knew  it."  Massachusetts  gallantly  stood  by  the  young 
girl  in  her  declaration,  and  so  did  all  her  brothers  and 
sisters ;  even  little  llliody  tossing  up  her  jaunty  sailor's 
cap,  and  shouting  out  that,  under  Providence,  she  was 
ready  to  "  sail  in." 

The  name  of  Sir  Walter  Ealeigh  is  greenly  twined 
through  the  earliest  settlements  of  North  Carolina. 
In  her  coasts  he  took  a  constantly  augmenting  inter- 
est, and  furnished  to  the  State  its  capital.  His  love 
for  the  new  settlement  only  ceased  to  beat  with  his 
heart.  His  verse,  which  the  author  of  "The  Fairy- 
Queen"  describes  as  "sprinkled  with  nectar,"  and  "vie- 
ing  with  the  notes  of  the  summer  nightingale,"  was 
musical  with  her  praises ;  and  his  "  History  of  the 
World"  lays  at  her  feet  the  tribute  of  his  warm, 
chivalric  nature. 

The  duty  which  he  felt  and  gave  to  the  two  Colonies, 
Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  was  very  different  from 
the  duties  which  his  successors  endeavored  to  draw 
from  them,  —  duties  so  onerous  as  to  drain  not  only 


THE   SETTLEMENTS   OF   VIRGINIA,  ETC.  101 

the  pockets  but  the  hearts  of  the  young  communities 
from  which  they  were  pressed  out. 

But  amid  all  the  trials  to  which  Virginia  was  sub- 
jected by  the  rapacity  of  her  governors  and  the  un- 
sated  appetites  of  councils,  named  by  the  home  board 
corporators,  there  was  one  point  which  she  could 
always  contemplate  with  satisfaction,  namely,  Old 
Point  Comfort,  —  a  grandmotherly  place,  which  her 
children  then,  and  since,  often  visited,  laying  their  hot 
heads  lovingly  in  her  lap,  until  her  pleasant  breezes 
cooled  their  feverish  throbbings. 

Tobacco  was  first  grown  in  Virginia  in  1616;  and 
we  crave  leave  to  add,  that  although  much  piped 
about  ever  since,  has  never  ceased  to  create  a  smoke ; 
its  curls  hanging  thickly  and  gracefully  around  the 
heads  of  its  world-wide  admirers  from  that  time  down 
to  the  present,  —  an  instance  of  unchanged  custom 
rarely  seen. 

Virginia,  however,  did  not  grow  all  of  her  luxuries ; 
for,  in  1620,  we  find  her  importing  ninety  respectable 
unmarried  girls,  who,  on  their  arrival,  and  after  pay- 
ment of  customary  duties,  were  soon  disposed  of.  This 
successful  invoice  was  followed,  the  succeeding  year, 
by  a  cargo  of  sixty  more,  the  price  for  whom  in- 
creased, after  they  were  landed,  from  one  hundred  and 
twenty  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of  tobacco. 
How  this  advance  affected  the  relations  between  them 
and  the  lower-priced  wives  of  the  preceding  year, 
whether  it  laid  the  foundation  for  the  difference  be- 
tween the  F.  F.  V.'s  and  the  white  trash,  the  want  of 
newspapers  and  of  well-preserved  family  bills  does  not 
enable  us  to  judge. 


102     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Certain  it  is  that  this  commercial  rape  was  as  cor- 
dially acquiesced  in  by  the  seized  damsels,  as  was  the 
rape  of  the  Sabines  by  those  young  ladies ;  and  proved 
to  be  as  beneficial  to  the  growth  of  the  infant  settle- 
ment as  that  novel  match-making  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tiber. 

The  descendants  of  these  unions  on  the  James  and 
Potomac  would  have  been  more  numerous  had  not 
their  numbers  been  thinned  off  by  Indian  knives, 
which  were  very  busy  in  1622,  1623,  and  1644-1646. 
This  last  war  was  followed,  three  years  later,  by  a  petty 
imitation  of  the  civil  strife  which  had  raged  for  seven 
years  between  the  Parliament  and  Charles  I.  in  Eng- 
land, and  which  ended,  in  the  latter  country,  by  taking 
off  the  king's  head,  and  in  Virginia  by  taking  away 
many  of  their  former  constitutional  privileges.  Crom- 
well fumigated  them  thoroughly  in  their  own  tobacco- 
smoke,  until  all  the  smell  of  loyalty  was  gone.  Upon 
the  accession  of  Charles  II.,  in  1660,  arbitrary  legis- 
lation was  sought  here,  as  in  England,  to  stamp 
out  the  rights  of  the  people  which  had  silently 
but  steadily  grown  up  into  a  stiff  crop;  but  resist- 
ance followed,  and  in  this  struggle  between  Virginia 
and  the  crown  the  succeeding  years  were  spent,  until 
1754. 

The  principal  event  in  the  history  of  the  settlement 
of  North  Carolina  was  the  fancy  constitution  furnished 
for  it  in  1669,  by  John  Locke,  whose  understanding 
about  it  differed  wholly  from  that  of  the  people, 
through  whose  heads  it  never  could  be  got.  Besides 
having  plenty  of  time  on  his  hands,  Locke  made  his 
constitution  so  long,  and  divided  it  up  into  so  many 


THE   SETTLEMENTS   OF   VIRGINIA,  ETC.  103 

parts,  tliat  the  youngest  settler  died  before  lie  had  read 
it  half  through,  and  bequeathed  the  further  perusal  of 
it  to  his  descendants,  with  all  his  shares  in  what  it 
most  resembled,  —  the  Dismal  Swamp. 

A  sniff  of  this  vague,  shadowy  constitution,  or  bun- 
dle of  airy  rights,  by  the  adjacent  settlement  of  South 
Carolina,  affected  her  with  such  a  fit  of  sneezing,  that 
it  kept  on  from  that  time  until  1865,  and  from  which 
she  only  found  relief  now  and  then  in  her  cotton 
pocket-handkerchiefs. 

We  may  remark  that  it  is  a  vulgar  error  to  sup- 
pose that  the  rivers  in  South  Carolina  run  up  hill,  — 
just  as  it  is  a  common  mistake  to  believe  that  the  Tar 
River,  in  North  Carolina,  originates  in  a  turpentine 
district,  and  flows  in  a  thick  stream  into  Pamlico 
Sound.  We  may  as  well,  also,  correct  the  almost 
universal  notion,  that  the  inhabitants  of  Charleston 
have  a  particular  fondness  for  fire  as  a  steady,  every- 
day diet. 

The  chief  incident  which  marked  the  uneventful 
record  of  the  Georgia  settlement  was  the  advent,  in 
1736,  of  John  Wesley. 

He  preached  in  the  Methodist  language  to  the  Creeks, 
Choctaws,  and  Cherokees  ;  but  those  short-lived  tribes, 
attending  on  a  certain  occasion  one  of  his  camp- 
meetings,  and  listening  to  the  benevolent  missionary 
giving  out  one  of  his  brother  Charles's  hymns,  became 
so  discouraged  that  they  went  back  to  their  own 
camp  and  ways. 

In  addition  to  what  we  have  already  said  of  Mary- 
land, we  would  state  that  its  mild  climate  attract- 
ed canvas-back  ducks,  as  its  mild  principles  of  re- 


104    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

ligious  toleration  brought  to  its  borders  swarms  of 
emigrants.  Both  have  had  a  damp  residence  amid 
its  amphibious  shores,  where  the  land  seems  two 
thirds  water,  and  the  water  a  little  more  moist  than 
elsewhere. 


THE   SETTLEMENTS   OF   VIRGINIA,  ETC.  105 


CHAPTER  III. 

JOHN  SMITH. 

John  Smith  historically  considered.  —  The  Number  in  Leading  Cities 
stated.  —  How  classified.  —  Why  he  is  not  put  in  a  separate  Volume  or 
in  an  Appendix.  —  Origin  of  the  Smiths.  —  American  Genealogical 
Trees.  —  Smiths  up  a  Stump,  in  the  Sap,  and  dangling  from  the 
Branches.  —  The  Antiquity  and  Ubiquity  of  :lie  Smiths.  —  Variety 
and  Extent  of  their  Occupations  and  Operations.  —  Will  probably  in 
time  own  all  the  World.  —  Comic  Situations  of  John  Smiths  in  Cities, 
at  Family  Dinner-Parties,  at  Prayer-Meetings,  at  Balls,  ha  Titles  to 
Real  Estate,  etc.  —  Whether  he  can  be  sued. —  Other  Legal  Questions 
in  reference  to  him  considered. — John  Smith  of  Pocahontas  Fame  a 
Myth. 

AS  a  magnet,  laid  amid  a  heap  of  iron-filings, 
gathers  them  all  to  itself  in  close-fitting  unity, 
so  the  figure  of  John  Smith  crystallizes  about  it  the 
elements  of  the  early  settler's  life  in  Virginia.  "Nor 
upon  the  banks  of  the  Chickahominy  alone  does  John 
Smith  stalk  in  romantic  proportions  ;  but  through  all 
times,  in  every  kingdom,  state,  city,  and  village,  at  all 
epochs,  and  in  every  shade  of  barbarism  or  civilization, 
is  he  found.  New  York  holds  187  ;  Philadelphia,  231 ; 
Boston,  35;  Brooklyn,  118;  London,  480;  and  every 
capital  in  the  world  its  own  appropriate  comple- 
ment. 

No  railroad  can  be  run  that  does  not  touch  his 
farm ;  no  joke  that  does  not  skim  his  peculiarities  ; 
no  portrait  that  does  not  contain  his  features ;  no 


JOHN  SMITH.  107 

conductor's  stealings  that  does  not  comprise  his  con- 
tributions ;  no  miller's  breakfast-bell  that  does  not 
toll  the  knell  of  a  portion  of  his  grist. 

As  dyers  classify  mankind  by  the  color  of  their 
skins,  wine-growers  belt  the  world  by  isothermal 
vine-lines,  and  lawyers  divide  the  human  race  into 
plaintiffs  and  defendants,  so  the  historian,  straining 
his  telescopic  gaze  over  the  centuries  and  the  globe, 
and  discarding  the  division  of  the  species  into  "  man- 
kind and  the  Beecher  family,"  —  no  longer  appropriate 
since  the  publication  of  "  Norwood  "  reduced  the  latter 
down  to  the  common  level,  —  justly  sweeps  all  man- 
kind into  two  great  classes,  the  Smiths  and  the  rest  of 
creation. 

And  so  John  Smith  finds  appropriate  place,  not  only 
in  every  history,  but  a  special  niche  and  chapter  to 
himself.  We  might  perhaps  have  put  this  select  men- 
tion of  a  great  public  benefactor,  an  erudite  scholar, 
and  universal  toiler,  into  a  note,  smothered  up  in  an 
appendix,  dimmed  by  the  milky- way  of  small  asterisks, 
and  hazily  obscured  by  countless  references  and  au- 
thorities ;  but  this  injustice  to  the  merits  of  an  ancient 
family,  whose  tombs  mound  every  churchyard,  and 
whose  door-plates  shine  on  almost  every  house  in  our 
cities  and  towns  not  appropriated  to  drugs,  groceries, 
or  confectioneries,  would,  we  are  persuaded,  sorely 
wound  the  public  conscience. 

The  origin  of  the  Smiths,  like  that  of  so  many  other 
distinguished  families,  is  involved  in  distressing  doubt. 
Audacious  -investigation,  with  a  natural  wish  to  pene- 
trate to  the  roots,  and  too  fearless  of  consequences 
where  prudence  perhaps  might  be  better  satisfied 


108      THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED  STATES. 

with  a  limited  view  of  ancestry,  has  pressed  its  in- 
quiries up  and  down  genealogical  trees  until  it  has 
unearthed  Smiths  at  the  base,  Smiths  in  the  sap, 
Smiths  up  the  stump,  and  even  Smiths  dangling  at 
the  end  of  the  branches.  No  nation  looks  down  in 
theory  from  such  lofty  heights  of  indifference  upon 
ancestral  distinctions  as  the  American ;  none  can 
better  afford  to  cut  down  their  genealogical,  as  they 
do  their  natural,  forests  ;  yet  none  are  so  fond  of  look- 
ing up  to  these  airy  and  waving  altitudes,  and  none 
that  more  carefully  spare  the  tree  which  in  youth 
sheltered  them,  and  which  waves,  like  the  flag,  long 
and  fruity  to  their  eyes.  An  American  book  of  lead- 
ing families  would  be  larger  than  the  London  Direc- 
tory, and  make  the  fortune  of  even  the  Congressional 
Printer.  True,  the  family  herald  would  in  nearly  all 
these  cases,  like  the  chroniclers  of  ancient  states,  and 
the  biographer  of  the  Smiths,  be  obliged  to  substitute 
foggy  conjecture  for  well-defined  tracings.  They 
would  all  find  that  their  researches  would,  if  carried 
back  far  enough,  converge  to  the  same  focal  point ; 
and  if  produced  at  equal  distances  in  the  future, 
diffuse  themselves  into  a  common  social,  monetary, 
and  undistinguishing  equality :  for  families  and  states 
are  much  like  boys  at  the  ends  of  a  balanced  board, 
now  up,  now  down,  at  one  time  touching  the  ground, 
then  curving  upward  through  medium  spaces  to  a 
culminating  point,  while  some  one  at  the  other  end 
is  noiselessly  passing  through  a  reversed  career. 

And  so  John  Smith  balances  and  pendulates  on  the 
same  board  with  a  Van  Eensselaer,  John  Brown  with  a 
Tozewell,  Mr.  Snooks  with  a  Winthrop,  and  John 
Doe  with  a  Hampton. 


JOHN   SMITH.  109 

There  is,  we  think,  but  little  doubt  that  the  Hebrew 
Samson,  the  Greek  Hercules,  the  Spanish  Cid,  the 
Scandinavian  Thor,  and  the  English  Arthur  of  the 
Bound  Table,  were  each  the  John  Smith  of  his  nation 
and  time,  a  multiform  unity  swinging  round  the  circle 
of  varied  labor,  hard  work,  and  heroic  deeds,  accom- 
plishing under  one  name  —  a  family  one,  possessed 
at  various  times  by  several  individuals  —  the  work  of 
all  reapers,  sewing-machines,  cow-milkers,  cotton  and 
woollen  factories.  These  national  heroes,  like  the 
John  Smiths,  their  descendants  now,  were  arrayed  in 
warm  climates  in  a  fragmentary  style  of  short  dress ; 
in  the  middle  regions  in  a  Highland  garb,  appropri- 
ately frilled  or  furred ;  and  in  the  north  with  a  canine 
material,  heroic  in  quality,  and  modishly  artistical,  — 
a  bark. 

The  most  reliable  studies  trace  the  smith  genealogy 
back  to  Vulcan's  workshop,  the  original  Smith  being 
one  of  those  employed  on  designs  for  Achilles's  shield, 
—  a  claim  which  experts  in  coats-of-arms  will  not 
readily  stamp  as  a  forge-ry. 

As  there  is  no  period  of  history  without  its  John 
Smith,  so  there  is  no  profession  that  does  not  enroll, 
no  trade  that  does  not  contain,  no  occupation,  from 
an  office-holder's  up  to  that  of  an  honest  man's,  that 
does  not  embrace  his  name.  Everywhere,  on  the  sea 
and  land ;  between  every  parallel  of  latitude,  almost 
between  every  pair  of  sheets  ;  at  every,  pole  and  at 
every  polling-place ;  on  all  rivers  and  in  every  strait ; 
at  every  point,  and  even  at  Point-no-point ;  on  the  top, 
at  the  middle  and  bottom  of  every  hill,  enterprise, 
company,  board  of  directors,  and  job ;  in  all  churches, 


110    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


ORIGINAL  FULL-LENGTH  PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN  SMITH. 


JOHN   SMITH.  Ill 

synagogues,  mosques,  and  temples ;  preaching,  singing, 
and  listening ;  talking  all  tongues,  as  well  as  curing, 
drying,  and  eating  them ;  in  prisons,  police-stations, 
pulpits,  grand-jury  and  other  boxes;  to-day  hung, 
to-morrow  putting  on  his  black  cap  and  sentencing 
the  culprit  to  the  rope's  end,  and  the  day  following 
condemning  a  pair  to  a  less  hempen  noose ;  in  the 
pugilistic  ring,  or  ecclesiastical  fight ;  the  actor  on  the 
stage,  and  at  the  same  time  the  spectator  in  the  box, 
looking  at  himself  personating  his  own  character,— 
for  every  character  is  his,  —  everywhere,  and  in  every- 
thing, is  found  this  jolly,  morose,  lazy,  active,  sleepy, 
wakeful,  fighting,  pacific,  coarse,  refined,  fat,  lean,  tall, 
short,  blue-eyed,  black-eyed  John  Smith. 

In  truth,  when  we  think  of  him  as  ubiquitous,  om- 
niscient, and  omnipresent,  doing  all  things  in  all 
places,  carrying  on  all  businesses,  living  on  all  the 
real  estate,  owning  at  some  time  or  other  all  the  per- 
sonal property,  pocketing  all  the  greenbacks,  whistling 
to  all  the  dogs,  riding  all  the  horses,  looking  after  all 
the  little  poodle  dogs,  buying  shoes  and  stockings  for 
all  the  children  agreeable  and  disagreeable,  we  get  into 
such  a  world  of  John  Smiths,  such  a  nightmare  of 
Johns,  such  a  maelstrom  of  Smiths,  such  a  gurgling, 
roaring,  splitting,  spitting,  laughing,  screeching,  titi- 
lated,  exhilarated,  carnival,  and  Fourth  of  July  of  John 
Smiths,  that  we  seem  to  be  in  a  room  lined  with 
mirrors  that  reflect  only  John  Smiths  from  all  sides ; 
indeed,  we  almost  fancy  ourselves  a  John  Smith,  our 
father  and  mother  a  John  Smith,  and  all  our  aunts, 
cousins,  uncles,  nephews,  brothers,  and  sisters,  and 
even  their  clergymen,  grocers,  shoemakers,  bootblacks, 


112    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

to  be  John  Smiths,  and  that  our  last  note  and  the 
mortgage  on  our  house  is  owned  by  John  Smith. 

But  the  Smith  family  do  not  create  all  the  humor 
and  spend  all  the  jollity  upon  others.  Funny  are  the 
scenes  which  transpire  among  themselves.  At  a 
family  party  two  John  Smiths  introduced,  and  each 
staring  at  his  other  self,  is  a  conundrum;  three  a 
charade,  in  which  the  whole  company  give  it  up.  A 
popular  young  lady,  with  card  in  her  belt  to  carry  the 
memory  of  her  numerous  engagements,  finds  herself 
swimming  in  doubt  as  to  the  identity  of  her  partners, 
when  John  Smith  claims  her  in  the  next  dance,  then 
for  the  following  cotillon,  then  bows  over  her  hand 
for  the  succeeding  polka,  and  so  confronts  her  at  every 
turn  of  the  figure  and  every  return  of  the  dance,  until 
she  doubts  her  own  individuality,  and  requests  to  be 
baptized  over  again  with  a  new  name  to  get  out  of  the 
tangle.  Then  at  a  family  dinner-party  of  Smiths, 
when  Mr.  Smith  asks  Mr.  John  Smith  the  part  of  the 
turkey  he  prefers,  and  several  voices  in  different  tones 
and  keys  indicate  as  many  different  portions  of  the 
bird,  there  is  a  delightful  series  of  warm  explanations 
which  enables  the  meal  to  become  healthily  cool, 
while  each  of  the  responders  courteously  leaves  the 
piece  he  wants  and  takes  one  he  did  not  desire. 

Among  the  comic  situations  which  Mr.  Smith  un- 
consciously creates  are,  that  of  a  conveyancer,  in  a 
large  city,  endeavoring  to  trace  a  title  through  a  J.  S., 
or  trying  to  ascertain  which  of  the  one  hundred  in  the 
directory  is  the  rightful  defendant  in  a  judgment,  or 
the  mortgagor  in  a  mortgage,  constituting  a  lien  on 
the  property  sought  to  be  transferred ;  or  a  country 


JOHN   SMITH.  113 

cousin,  for  the  first  time  in  New  York  or  Philadelphia, 
consulting  the  directory  to  find  her  puzzled  way  to 
the  forgotten  residence  of  her  cousin  John  Smith,  or 
innocently  asking  a  polite  but  humorous  gentleman,  in 
the  street  whether  he  knows  John  Smith's  house ;  or 
a  clergyman  in  a  city  prayer-meeting  asking  John 
Smith  to  lead  in  prayer,  and  finding  three  or  four, 
with  closed  eyes,  responding  to  the  request;  or  a 
notary  making  up  his  mind  where  to  leave  a  notice 
of  protest  of  a  large  note  on  the  indorser  John  Smith, 
who  wittily  wrote  his  name  without  any  address  under 
it.  Indeed,  it  would  be  one  of  the  causes  cel&bres  for 
a  jury  to  determine  whether  a  child  might  not  guilt- 
lessly mistake  his  parent  who  bore  only  this  undis- 
tinguishing  name  ;  whether  a  forgery  of  the  name 
could  be  committed ;  whether  an  express  company  be 
bound  to  deliver  a  trunk  to  this  nominis  unibrce  ; 
or  whether  a  wife,  Mrs.  John  Smith,  could  be  lawfully 
convicted  of  eloping  with  any  one. 

Then  when  John  Smith  comes  to  die,  in  the  church- 
yard, and  afterwards  when  the  dead  arise  —  but  we 
stagger  under  the  vision  of  puzzled  bones  and  stop. 

We  cannot  write  more  lucidly  the  history  of  the 
John  Smith  of  Pocahontas  fame.  It  grows  mythical 
the  more  we  look  at  it ;  an  abstraction  dancing  over 
the  coals  of  the  early  settlement  of  Virginia,  a  face 
and  figure  flitting  like  a  twisting  flame,  up,  around,  and 
through  the  grate  ;  seeming  as  we  try  to  fix  our  atten- 
tion upon  him  like  a  dozen  different  men,  one  falling 
in  love  with  the  young  squaw,  another  surveying  the 
James  and  Piappahannock,  another  mastering  the 
turbulent  spirits  of  a  dissolute  and  discontented  settle- 


114    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

ment;  another  caught  and  brought  before  Powhatan, 
while  a  graceful  girl  of  twelve  summers  gently  puts 
away  the  descending  club ;  another  sailing  to  England, 
and  peeping  out  ever  and  anon  among  the  friendly 
faces  that  make  the  living  frame  to  her  young  virgin 
face,  yet  again  dissolving  and  melting  into  the  gray 
dimness  of  the  morning  light.  Of  only  one  thing  do 
we  feel  certain  in  regard  to  John  Smith  in  general,  the 
average  John  Smith,  that  the  portrait  here  presented, 
taken  by  instantaneous  photography,  representing  his 
multitudinous  character,  is  the  only  genuine  and 
original  likeness  ever  published. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

OF  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  STATES. 

Views  of  the  New  England  States  and  Character  determined  by  one's 
Church.  —  Partial  Notions  about  Clocks,  Nutmegs,  Pumpkin  Pies,  etc. 
—  Getting  an  Historical  Coach  to  one's  self.  —  Why  the  Puritans  did 
not  hang  up  their  Stockings  on  their  first  Christmas  Eve.  —  Their 
nearest  Neighbors.  —  Indian  Points  and  other  Points.  —  Governor 
Carver  and  Want  of  Meats.  —  Massasoit,  and  how  he  kept  his  Faith 
in-violate.  —  New  Hampshire  on  the  Rampage.  —  Why  Boston  was 
begun,  and  why  it  is  not  finished.  —  Roger  Williams  and  his  Provi- 
dential Ways  and  Doings.  —  Connecticut  founded,  although  its  Char- 
ter not  found.  —  The  Wind  against  Cromwell.  —  Harvard  College.  — 
Vermont  and  her  Ways  and  Means. 


"  '"T^ELL  me,"  says  a  witty  Frencnman,  "  what  time 
-L  in  the  morning  a  man  rises,  and  I  will  tell  you 
his  notions  of  the  character  of  the  Germans."  Tell  us 
the  kind  of  church  a  man  attends,  and  we  will  under- 
take to  give  you  his  opinion  of  the  character  of  the 
Puritan  Pilgrims,  and  the  objects  and  value  of  the 
New  England  settlements.  Not  more  various  are 
men's  religions  than  their  New  England  convictions  ; 
as  checkered  and  contrary  as  the  black  and  white 
squares  on  a  Scotch  shawl.  Some  people,  of  pious 
trainings  but  of  an  agricultural  turn  of  mind,  hold 
the  idea  that  New  England  came,  like  the  wonderful 
coach  in  the  story  of  Cinderella,  from  a  pumpkin; 
and  hence  travel  naturally  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
principal  mission  of  her  people  is  to  keep  up  Thanks- 
giving day. 


116    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

Others  run  all  their  lives  with  the  notion  that  the 
Yankee  States  were  settled  by  a  race  of  peripatetic 
traders,  —  a  revival  of  the  school  of  Aristotle,  —  let 
but  in  Greece,  and  taking  a  play-spell  here.  Their 
picture  of  New  England  would  be  a  pedler,  dipped 
like  a  tallow-candle  in  an  economical,  tight-fitting 
suit  of  tawny  homespun,  driving  a  wagon  full  of 
tin  notions,  clocks,  and  a  variety  of  domestic  nut- 
megs, artistically  whittled  out  of  bass-wood,  singing 
Old  Hundred,  with  a  pitch-pipe  close  to  his  nose  to 
keep  it  in  tune.  Others,  on  the  contrary,  regard  it  as 
a  large,  full-bearing  orchard  in  autumn,  laden  with 
golden  fruit,  fall-pippins,  pearmains,  seek-no-furthers, 
russets,  and  spitzenbergs,  supplying  its  owners,  the 
neighborhood,  and  the  distant  market  with  their  in- 
comparable harvest.  Fortunate  for  the  historian,  for 
debating-societies,  and  the  magazines  are  these  varie- 
gated opinions.  They  give  a  spiciness  to  New  Eng- 
land, as  if  she  were  a  tropical  garden  instead  of  a 
poor-man's  patch,  fenced  in  with  rocks  and  spiked 
down  with  long  pegs  to  prevent  the  frost  in  the  spring 
from  heaving  her  up  uncomfortably.  They  serve,  like 
French  cookery,  to  present  the  same  dish  simmering 
in  various  sauces  under  different  aspects  and  names, 
and  yet  all  from  the  same  little  market-basket. 

Cooke,  the  comic  actor,  who  hated  to  be  crowded, 
once  so  successfully  used  upon  a  stage-driver  his 
extraordinary  power  of  changing  the  expression  of 
his  face, — getting  in  at  one  door  of  the  coach,  slipping 
out  of  the  one  opposite,  and  again  presenting  himself 
with  a  new  style  of  visage,  —  that  he  took  all  the 
inside  to  himself.  And  so  it  has  been  with  the  New 


OF  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  STATES.  117 

England  character.  It  has  so  many  phases  that  it 
requires  almost  the  entire  omnibus  of  American  his- 
tory to  itself.  One  point  is  quite  certain,  that  the 
first  settlers  had  a  hard  place  to  land  on,  and  a  great 
many  sharp  Indian  points  to  provide  against  after 
they  had  landed. 

St.  Augustine  was  fifty-five,  Jamestown  fourteen,  and 
the  baby  Dutch  settlement  on  Manhattan  Island  ten 
years  of  age,  when  the  little  English  congregation 
which  had  passed  thirteen  years  at  Leyden  in  Holland, 
—  stowed  away  in  two  small  vessels,  one  of  sixty  and 
the  other  of  one  hundred  and  eighty  tons,  —  stepped 
out  of  their  cold  cabins  upon  the  colder  rock  of 
Plymouth.  It  was  three  days  before  Christmas  ;  but 
for  want  of  good  fireplaces  they  did  not  hang  up  their 
stockings.  It  was  as  much  as  they  could  do  to  keep 
from  hanging  themselves.  Their  nearest  white  neigh- 
bors were  at  Port  Eoyal,  Nova  Scotia,  five  hundred 
miles  distant,  —  a  trifle  too  far  away  to  invite  New- 
Year's  calls. 

Most  of  the  party  were  obliged  to  wade  on  shore, 
thus  breaking  the  ice  for  those  who  followed;  the 
spray  of  the  sea  freezing  as  it  fell  upon  them,  making 
them  quite  ice-clad,  in  fact  almost  as  shaggy  and 
pointed  as  their  inside  purposes  and  character. 

They  carried  on  shore  one  dead  body,  the  only  one 
who  had  died  on  the  voyage  of  one  hundred  and  six 
days  ;  the  first  planting  in  that  field,  which  in  time, 
like  the  rest  of  the  world,  was  to  be  claimed  as  God's 
acre. 

The  soil  upon  which  they  settled  bore  more  char- 
ters, Indian  arrows,  and  gravestones  than  pumpkins 


118    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 


OF  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  STATES.   119 

or  corn ;  and  even  two  years  after  the  landing,  we  are 
told  that  the  stock  on  hand  of  the  latter  was  so  small 
that  only  five  kernels  were  allowed  for  each  private,  — 
an  allowance  which,  since  the  great  Eebellion,  seems 
incredibly  small. 

There  was  a  Carver  among  the  party,  and,  being  a 
sharp  fellow,  he  was  appointed  Governor ;  but  as  there 
was  but  little  meat  to  be  sliced,  —  deer  being  scarce 
and  high  priced,  —  and  the  Indians  seldom  giving  any 
quarter,  he  soon  pined  away  and  died.  Cape  Cod  was 
not  far  distant,  but  the  emigrants  being  without  boats, 
the  fish,  especially  without  potatoes,  were  poor  pick- 
ing. A  few  years  later,  however,  and  there  were 
large  fishing-parties  made  up,  which  not  only  took 
in  fish,  but  each  other,  by  hook  and  by  crook.  The 
grapes  of  Martha's  Vineyard,  at  the  time  of  which  we 
speak,  hung  so  high  as  to  be  very  sour.  Besides  the 
Puritans,  it  is  well  known,  set  their  faces  against 
the  cup,  as  they  did  against  kissing.  The  modern 
town  of  Dux-bury,  which  nudges  Plymouth  on  the 
east,  was  then  too  young  to  afford  much  game,  even 
for  the  long  reaches  of  Miles  Standish,  who  was 
obliged  to  content  himself  with  such  small  shooting 
as  the  ISTarragansetts  afforded. 

Massasoit,  however,  was  the  fast  friend  of  the  set- 
tlers, and  made  a  treaty  which,  in  the  bluest  times,  he 
always  kept  in-violate. 

In  1629  a  patent  was  received  from  that  accom- 
plished penman  Charles  I.,  incorporating  "  The  Gov- 
ernor and  Company  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  in  New 
England  "  ;  which  eventually  proved  to  be,  what  most 
patents  are,  not  worth  the  paper  it  was  written  on. 


120    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

New  Hampshire  and  a  part  of  Maine,  included  in  this 
patent,  was  as  early  as  1622  sold  out  to  two  enter- 
prising young  gentlemen,  Sir  Ferdinand  Gorges  and 
Captain  John  Mason ;  but  after  an  experiment  of 
nineteen  years,  these  royal  speculators  resold  their 
state  rights  to  Massachusetts,  which  held  on  to  them 
until  1680,  when  Charles  II.,  in  order  to  make  a  place 
for  a  friend  and  to  encourage  lawsuits  about  titles  in 
the  idle  courts,  erected  New  Hampshire  into  a  sep- 
arate Province,  independent  of  Massachusetts,  but  de- 
pendent on  himself. 

Lying  under  cold  snow-white  sheets,  with  jealous 
neighbors,  the  French  settlers  of  Canada  and  Acadia, 
ready  to  put  pins  in  the  youngster  and  keep  her  crying, 
and  if  possible  to  stunt'  her  growth,  Maine  was  long- 
est in  her  cradle  of  any  of  the  infant  settlements.  As 
early  as  1602  some  Frenchmen  landed  on  her  coast, 
but  only  remained  long  enough  to  make  a  few  eyelet- 
holes  in  that  watery  frill  which  the  busy  but  chill 
fingers  of  the  Atlantic  has  wrought  upon  her  eastern 
hem.  It  was  reserved  for  the  sturdier  Saxon  race  to 
take  the  infant  in  hand,  and,  by  hardier  treatment, 
to  bring  her  up  to  robuster  strength.  The  first  serious 
effort  was  made  in  1622.  That  court  pet,  Gorges, 
obtained,  in  1639,  a  charter,  which  not  only  covered 
the  present  State,  but  lapped  over  into  the  borders  of 
Massachusetts.  The  latter  resented  this  interference 
with  her  own  by  making  counter-claims,  and  in  1652 
insisted  upon  taking  the  child  under  its  exclusive  pro- 
tection. The  contest,  carried  into  the  English  courts, 
outlived  of  course  its  original  promoters,  but  was  at 
last,  -in  1677,  terminated,  to  the  astonishment  of  the 


OF  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  STATES.  121 

suitors  and  the  disgust  of  the  lawyers.  The  custody 
of  the  infant,  now  grown  to  be  a  stripling,  was 
awarded  to  Massachusetts,  which,  always  looking  after 
the  Maine  chance,  got  a  most  obstreperous  minor  in 
charge. 

1  In  1630  a  band  of  eight  hundred  and  forty  bodies 
and  souls,  led  by  John  Winthrop,  and  tempted  by  a 
spring  of  good  water,  settled  on  the  peninsula  of  Shaw- 
mut,  and  began  Boston,  which,  we  are  glad  to  say,  is 
not  finished  yet.  May  it  never  be ;  but,  ever  growing, 
may  it  carry  on  wagon-making  as  successfully  as  in 
former  days,  furnishing  hubs  for  those  covered  trans- 
portation carts  which  trundle  westward,  and  which,  if 
allowed  to  stand  still  over  night,  swarm  into  a  new 
colony  the  next  morning. 

The  following  year  a  miniature  church  and  state 
experiment  was  made  in  the  Massachusetts  settlement, 
by  limiting  the  eligibility  to  civil  office  to  church- 
members,  whether  civil  or  not. 

The  first  log-cabin  builders,  who  had  themselves 
fled  from  the  knife  of  the  law,  whetted  it  to  a  keen 
edge  and  turned  it  upon  their  fellow-sufferers,  who 
differed  from  them  in  their  religious  or  moral  senti- 
ments. Profane  swearing,  tippling,  taking  interest  on 
loans  of  money,  and  wearing  expensive  jewelry  became 
legal  crimes,  among  those  who  had  suppressed  with 
Spartan  rigor  their  exercise  in  themselves  and  their 
families.  The  next  generation,  in  1658,  could  not 
tolerate  drab  coats  or  drab  principles,  and  sought  to 
put  down  the  new  fashions  by  hanging  up  several  of 
their  owners  in  them.  The  wood-colored  styles  multi- 
plied of  course,  notwithstanding  the  crimson  mode  of 
6 


122    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

dealing  with  them,  —  a  mode  which,  whenever  men- 
tioned, brings  up  a  flush  on  every  fair  New  England 
cheek  to  this  day.  The  flush  is  not  likely  to  be 
left  unsummoned  so  long  as  the  enemies  of  New 
England  have  any  ink  left,  or  so  long  as  her  own 
gifted  sons  preserve  in  choicest  amber  the  well-em- 
balmed and  dramatic  specimens. 

In  1635  Eoger  Williams,  illuminated  by  principles 
of  religious  toleration,  unkindled  as  yet  in  the  Puritan 
settlements  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  Salem,  and  Boston, 
carried  his  softly  burning  torch  out  of  the  reach  of  the 
chill  breath  of  the  General  Court,  which  sought  in 
vain  to  blow  out  the  wavering  flame. 

He  pitched  his  tent  on  the  Blackstone  River  where 
it  widens  into  Narragansett  Bay,  and  there  grafted 
such  a  lovely  little  bud  of  religious  equality  upon  the 
old  trunk  of  settled  law,  that,  swelling  under  Provi- 
dence into  the  State  of  Rhode  Island,  it  has  become 
one  of  the  finest  fruit-trees  in  our  American  orchard. 
Some  people,  of  aquatic  notions  and  learning  their 
geography  in  the  pitching  hold  of  a  yacht,  have  erro- 
neously supposed  that  Rhode  Island  was  included  in 
the  state  of  Newport.  Such  notions  rest  on  very 
sandy  foundations,  and  are  no  more  to  be  trusted  than 
the  speculations  of  the  idly  learned  about  the  round 
tower  of  that  resort  for  capital  sea-bathing.  f 

The  settlement  of  Rhode  Island,  like  the  other 
American  plantations,  was  kept  alive  and  stirring  by 
Indian  wars ;  but,  aided  by  the  Xarragansetts,  she 
succeeded  at  last,  after  attempting  to  bury  their  hatch- 
ets, in  burying  the  Pequods  themselves,  leaving  not 
one  to  perpetuate  the  seed. 


OF  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  STATES.  123 

Meanwhile,  the  valley  of  the  Connecticut,  visited 
by  exploring  parties  from  Plymouth  Colony  under  the 
younger  Winthrop,  and  by  heavy  flanked  Dutchmen 
from  the  island  of  Manhattan,  had  also  attracted  at- 
tention to  its  valuable  real  estate ;  and  its  lots  of 
course  were  mapped  out  and  deeded  in  that  first-class 
broker's  office,  the  Court  of  Charles  I.,  situated  in 
London. 

Wethersfield,  although  it  then  had  no  onions  to 
affect  their  eyes,  made  the  mouths  of  a  party  of 
emigrants,  who  went  there  under  Hooker  in  June, 
1636,  to  water  pleasantly,  as  they  gaped  over  its 
broad  meadow-lands,  shaded  with  huge  trees,  and 
dipping  their  heavy  grasses  into  the  wide  and  flowing 
river. 

But  these  huge  trees  at  Wethersfield  and  Windsor, 
under  which  the  infant  plantations  of  Connecticut 
were  made,  were  less  valuable  than  the  large  old  oak 
at  Hartford,  which  afterwards  became  more  famous  for 
standing  mute,  and  hiding  its  secrets,  than  the  talking 
oak  of  Tennyson. 

Ten  years  later,  in  1638,  New  Haven  was  founded, 
built  from  the  first  on  the  square;  its  long  sand- 
reaches  cooled  in  the  shade  of  branches  that  waved 
frequent  welcomes  to  successive  bands  of  settlers. 
But  a  shadier  event  for  Charles  I.  occurred  this  year 
in  England,  in  the  detention  of  John  Hampden  and 
Oliver  Cromwell,  with  all  their  traps  and  plunder, 
after  it  and  they  had  been  safely  stowed  away  under 
hatches  on  board  ship. 

How  little  do  we  know  what 's  in  the  wind  ?  Had 
it  blown  that  day  southwest  instead  of  northeast, 


124    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

Charles  I.  might  have  worn  his  handsome  but  worth- 
less head  many  years  longer  ;  the  Stuart  family  to-day 
might  perhaps  be  occupying  the  state  chair  of  Vic- 
toria and  the  heavy  Hanoverians ;  and  the  descend- 
ants of  Messrs.  Cromwell  and  Hampden  be  keeping 
store  in  some  of  our  villages,  or  even  got  so  low  as  to 
become  aldermen,  members  of  assembly,  or  even  de- 
scended to  the  House  of  Representatives. 

The  same  year  John  Harvard  left  a  donation  of 
three  thousand  dollars  to  a  select  school,  founded  two 
years  previously  at  Newtown,  which  took  his  money 
and  name.  From  this  small,  yet  early  laid  founda- 
tion, Harvard  College  has  since  got  up  several  Storeys ; 
and  although  Sparks  have  been  applied  to  the  edifice, 
it  still  stands,  like  a  tower  set  on  a  hill,  diffusing  its 
learned  light  to  Holmes  happy  and  genial,  reaching 
upward  to  Longfellow,  and  even  illuminating  men 
Whittier  than  he. 

We  have  now  briefly  traced  the  settlements  of  five 
of  the  New  England  States,  bringing  down  their  his- 
tory to  1643,  when,  with  the  exception  of  spunky 
Rhode  Island,  they  formed  their  first  union  against 
the  witty  but  out-witted  French  of  Acadia  on  the 
northeast,  the  trading,  solid  Dutch  of  Manhattan,  and 
the  universally  hostile  Indian  tribes,  whose  enmity 
now  became  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  their  hunting- 
grounds.  The  sixth  of  these  States,  Vermont,  came 
late  and  strugglingly  among  her  brothers  and  sisters. 
Both  New  York  and  New  Hampshire  pouted  and 
grumbled  at  the  appearance  of  the  new-comer,  and 
threatened  to  smother  her  in  the  cradle.  But  the 
child,  fed  on  simple  food,  and  breathing  the  healthy 


OF  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  STATES.   125 

air  of  the  Green  Mountains,  grew  apace  after  its  birth 
in  1724,  and  got  such  a  good  Constitution  in  1777, 
that  she  at  length  acquired  all  her  rights  ;  and  what  by 
fishing  in  the  Connecticut,  hunting  among  her  ever- 
green hills,  and  keeping  to  her  mutton  and  her  last, 
she  looked  as  she  sat  in  the  old  continental  school- 
house  as  fresh,  blooming,  and  thrifty  as  any.  Vermont 
early  sent  away  her  surplus  beef  and  swine,  but  she 
kept  plenty  of  pluck  at  home. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  if  the  Western  States  had 
been  first  discovered,  New  England  would  never  have 
been  settled  at  all;  but  this  seeming  reproach  upon  the 
hard  and  stern  features  of  New  England  soil  and  cli- 
mate warms  into  a  compliment  when  we  see  what 
fabrics  of  iron,  cotton,  and  woollen  have  been  conjured 
from  her  narrow  means,  what  wealth  dangles  from  her 
hooks,  what  oil  she  gets  without  blubbering,  wrhat  a 
clean  white  marble  face  she  puts  on  our  houses  and 
stores,  and  what  nutmegs  and  tropical  wonders  she 
picks  up  from  her  beeches  and  haze-le  bushes,  and 
what  seasoning  she  distributes  to  spice  our  tables  with 
literary  condiments. 


CHAPTEE  V. 

THE  SETTLEMENT   OF  NEW  YORK. 

The  Spirits  of  the  Age  present  at  its  Foundation.  —  Who  they  were  and 
how  they  were  affected.  —  The  Wonders  of  Manhattan  in  September, 
1609.  —  How  the  Animal,  Vegetable,  Ornithological,  Maritime,  and 
Human  Productions  then  compared  with  those  now.  —  What  New 
York  Lots  were  worth  two  hundred  and  sixty  Years  ago.  — Their 
Owners.  —  Hudson's  Trip  up  the  River.  —  What  he  saw  and  did  n't 
see.  —  The  four  Dutch  Governors;  their  Doings  and  Misdoings. — 
Sketch  of  Holland  and  the  Characteristics  which  she  impressed  upon 
New  Amsterdam.  —  Bravery  evinced  in  settling  Brooklyn.  —  How  the 
Van  Rensselaers  and  other  Vans  were  enticed  hither.  —  The  Troubles 
and  Sorrows  of  Wonter  Van  Twiller  and  William  Kieft.  —  Of  the 
Surrender  of  the  Dutch,  and  the  Instalment  of  English  Rule  in  New 
York.  —  Petrus  Stuyvesaut  retires  from  Business.  —  His  Farm  and 
what  he  raised  on  it. 

"  r  I  "'HE  spirit  of  the  age,"  says  Bancroft,  "  was  pres- 
JL  ent  when  the  foundations  of  New  York  were 
laid."  More  justly  might  it  be  said  that  a  good  deal 
of  spirits,  including  a  fair  amount  of  Holland  schnaps, 
put  up  in  long  gray-colored  jugs,  was  there,  carried  on 
shore  by  order  of  the  honest  skipper  of  the  Half- 
Moon,  and  duly  distributed  on  the  auspicious  occasion. 
The  corner-stone  of  the  Western  metropolis  was  laid  by 
a  mason  employed  by  the  Dutch  East  India  Company, 
whose  wide  breeches,  glittering  knee-buckles,  and 
large  slouched  hat,  set  off  by  a  smart  feather,  seemed 
to  the  straight-limbed,  wondering  Algonquins,  as  they 
huddled  in  friendly  curiosity  around  him,  to  belong  to 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  NEW  YORK. 


127 


o 

^"i 


-s      k\W^vflt_  f^     -   '        #*-.   *>.    ^VA  \ 


"i 


128     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

some  well-fed,  fat  Mercury,  fresh  from  a  distant  Olym- 
pus, taking  a  pleasant  trip  to  their  simple  island. 

The  spirits  were  not  enclosed  in  a  corner-stone,  as  is 
customary  at  these  raisings,  but  were  more  judiciously 
used  by  the  sagacious  Hendrick  Hudson  among  the 
bewildered  spectators. 

Beautiful  were  the  sights  which  greeted  the  eye  of 
the  adventurous  Dutch  navigator,  as  on  the  twenty- 
third  day  of  September,  1609,  he  cast  anchor  in  the 
broad  bay  of  New  York.  On  every  side  the  shores 
were  feathered  by  woods,  freshly  painted  by  the  liberal 
hand  of  an  American  autumn.  The  varied  trees,  the 
golden  willow,  the  scarlet  sumach,  the  red  and  white 
maples,  the  sassafras,  mixing  with  the  oaks  and 
beeches  and  the  birch,  —  unassociated  as  yet  with 
schools  or  discipline,  —  had  begun  to  blaze  in  their  va- 
ried gorgeous  hues,  and  their  leaves  to  cover  the  ground 
with  carpets  of  beautiful  patterns.  Upon  the  branches 
climbed  vines  that  fell  from  tree  to  tree,  draping  them 
in  garments  whose  innocent  height  rivalled  those  of 
the  Indians  who  found  shelter  beneath  them. 

Through  these  woods  the  mocking-bird  trilled  its 
varied  song,  its  original  strains  almost  as  liquid  and 
sweet  as  those  of  its  mimic  successor,  the  unfeathered 
biped  who  now  lures  the  modern  Ne\v-Yorker  to 
greenly  arching  saloons,  and  there  exchanges  notes 
with  him.  The  humming-bird,  too,  darted  in  sparkles  t 
through  the  leafy  avenues,  —  not  as  now  carried  upon 
the  top  of  a  lady's  head,  but  dipping  its  own  bill  in  the 
wild  flowers  that  hung  through  all  the  Boweries  of 
Manhattan.  Pigeons,  unplucked,  sped  unhurt  through 
all  the  saloons  of  nature.  Doves,  not  those  mellifluous 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  NEW  YORK.       129 

names  that  invite  to  restaurants,  and  there  present 
their  dear  bills  to  the  stranger,  but  the  gayly  plumed 
and  round  -  necked  birds,  cooed  in  the  thickets. 
Coveys  of  quails  occupied  the  place  of  those  other 
coveys,  which,  turned  to  jail-birds,  now  nutter  behind 
bars.  Here  and  there  troops  of  wild  turkey  wheeled 
in  long  circles,  instead  of  dangling,  as  now,  by  one 
leg  in  front  of  a  Broadway  market. 

In  the  untroubled  waters  oysters  made  their  own 
beds,  and  tucked  themselves  in  as  they  saw  'fit,  undis- 
turbed by  the  injurious  names  of  hard  shell  which  a 
party  of  frogs  or  others  might  croak  out  around  them. 
The  opossum  had  not  yet  lent  its  name  to  deceitful 
concealments,  but  openly  showed  its  offspring  in  its 
domestic  pouch. 

Turtles,  although  wearing  the  green,  innocently 
walked  around  with  their  feet  upon  the  honest  earth, 
instead  of  spreading  them  upwards  in  the  air,  with 
their  backs  uneasily  indorsing  the  city's  dirty  side- 
walks, their  office-like  fatness  attracting  the  liquorish 
eye  of  some  gourmand. 

Even  the  bears  licked  their  own  cubs  with  innocent 
delight,  not  only  in  AVall  Street,  but  in  all  the  un- 
walled  places  in  and  about  New  York.  The  thrifty 
otter  —  the  only  banker  on  the  whole  island  —  made 
his  deposits  in  safety ;  nor  was  he  frightened,  as  he  slowly 
accumulated  the  savings  of  his  well-spent  life,  by  the 
lively  sallies  of  the  jackdaw,  carrying  ever  with  him 
the  burglarious  instruments  of  his  trade  ;  nor  heeded 
the  harmless  slanders  of  the  woodpecker,  as  he  gratified 
his  strange  taste  in  finding  out  and  exploring  the  ten- 
der or  rotten  character  of  the  neighboring  trees. 
6*  i 


130    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED  STATES. 

In  keeping  with  these  sylvan  and  rustic  scenes  were 
the  native  owners.  They  disdained  the  waste  of  time 
involved  in  the  frequent  change  of  dress ;  appearing  in 
the  same  costume,  morning  and  evening.  Nothing 
could  be  in  greater  contrast  than  the  simple  toilets 
of  these  proprietors  of  the  island  of  Manhattan  and 
their  painted  successors  of  our  own  day.  The  few  men 
who  owned  the  141,486  lots  into  which  the  surface  of 
New  York  City  is  now  triturated,  seemed,  in  the  plain- 
ness of  their  attire  and  manners,  to  be  only  squatters 
upon  a  territory  not  their  own,  nor  carried  their  feath- 
ered heads  half  as  high  as  the  modern  trader  in  tape 
and  calico,  squeezed  into  a  space  often  only  sixteen  feet 
and  eight  inches  wide  by  one  hundred  deep.  Children 
were  kept  in  due  subordination.  Instead  of  attending 
parties  or  clubs,  they  were  quietly  hung  upon  a  nail 
at  the  door  of  the  wigwam ;  the  heir  of  a  square  mile 
being  suspended  in  unwhimpering  silence,  until  his 
grave  progenitors  took  their  fill  of  nuts  and  sleep. 
There  were  no  complaints  of  taxes,  dirty  streets,  very 
common  councils,  or  cheating  at  elections. 

The  uncertainty  and  tediousness  of  legal  proceed- 
ings were  unknown.  The  plaintiff  was  his  own  attor- 
ney, jury,  judge,  and  sheriff;  deciding  the  case  sum- 
marily, and  doing  execution  on  the  defendant  between 
sunset  and  sunrise. 

Lingering  only  a  few  days  among  these  primitive 
inhabitants,  —  shooting  game,  doubtless,  from  the  an- 
cient trees  occupying  the  very  spot  at  the  corner  of 
Nassau  and  Wall  Streets,  where,  in  less  than  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty  years  afterwards,  the  first  Federal  Con- 
gress met,  where,  four  years  after  that  meeting,  Wash- 


THE   SETTLEMENT   OF   NEW   YORK.  131 

ington  was  inaugurated  President,  and  where,  a  few 
generations  later,  more  money  was  daily  disbursed 
than  would  have  sufficed  to  buy  all  the  then  settle- 
ments of  America,  Hudson  turned  his  little  craft  of 
eighty  tons  up  the  river  which  has  since  borne  his 
name.  Banks,  since  famous  for  historic  events;  or 
wed  to  literary  matings,  happy  and  dear,  attracted 
for  forty  leagues  his  pleased  attention.  Wealth  and 
taste  have  since  embossed  cities,  towns,  cultured  villas, 
and  grounds  upon  these  shores;  fringed  them  with 
varied  foliage  native  and  exotic,  and  thrown  over  them 
all  the  lace-like  illusions  of  legends,  stories,  poetic 
fancies,  and  fairy-tales  ;  but  to  the  simple,  honest  eyes 
of  Hudson  nothing  had  ever  presented  itself  more 
wonderful  than  that  ever  unrolling  panorama  of  wood 
and  wave,  dripping  with  the  intense  and  varied  colors 
with  which  nature  saturates  and  transfigures  our 
autumnal  woods. 

The  bosky  reaches  of  Hoboken ;  the  Palisades  with 
their  high,  massive  walls  propping  up  the  sky,  which 
leans  as  lovingly  as  heaven  can  upon  New  Jersey 
without  being  taken  for  railroad  purposes ;  the  placid 
waters,  since  named  Spuyten  Duyvil,  which  parted 
Manhattan  from  the  main-land,  and  sent  back  from  its 
well-framed  looking-glass,  promontory  and  foliaged 
steeps,  laced  with  scarlet  vines ;  the  gentle  slopes  of 
"Westchester,  sliding  into  the  sea-like  river,  unwounded 
by  rails,  and  innocent  of  the  foul-mouthed  smoke  of 
candle-factories  ;  the  long-curving  bays  of  Eockland, 
adorned  with  crimson  capes,  pinned  with  rocky  points, 
yet  so  as  advantageously  to  show  off  their  bare 
shoulders ;  the  native  site  of  Sunnyside,  where  after 


132    THE  COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

dwelt  the  gentle,  lamb-like  Irving,  as  true  and  loyal 
a  soul  as  was  ever  lent  to  men  to  draw  them  up 
where  late  he  went  back  himself;  the  grand,  majestic 
Highlands,  with  their  muster-roll  of  glories,  pennoned 
•with  crimson  banners  hung  out  from  every  rock- 
anchored  fort  of  nature,  among  them  Cro'  Nest,  the 
home  of  that  Culprit  Fay,  whose  love  treason  has  been 
pardoned  before  so  many  domestic  tribunals;  the 
lake-like  bay  of  New-Burgh,  so  well  sentinelled  by 
its  double  sentry  of  shores,  which  challenge  sharply 
every  passer-by ;  and  the  dentating,  curved  shores  that 
stretch  in  slow  haste  northwards  ;  often  channelled  by 
playful  brooks  that  lay  their  kissful  obedience  into  the 
loving  lap  of  the  mother  river,  or  were  clasped  by 
bracelets  of  burning  maples,  whose  clustered  garnets 
shone  on  her  rounded  arms,  —  all  these  varied  charms 
quite  intoxicated  the  sober  Hudson,  keeping  him  con- 
stantly on  deck,  and  causing  heavy  draughts  on  the 
ship's  supply  of  Schiedam. 

He  brought  to  the  Half-Moon  off  the  present  city 
of  Hudson,  —  then  altogether  too  young  to  present 
him  with  its  freedom  in  a  box ;  and  in  a  small  boat 
was  rowed  up  the  fresh  waters  of  the  river  beyond,  as 
far  as  Albany,  —  the  Trojans  assert  as  far  as  Troy  ; 
but  in  this  a-bridge-d  compendium  we  cannot  pause 
to  lay  our  hands  on  the  necessary  documents  to  settle 
this  question. 

Suffice  it  to  say  that  there  being  no  legislature  in 
session  at  Albany,  he  got  away  without  being  fleeced, 
or  even  being  obliged  to  listen  to  a  speech  from  the 
speaker.  He  was  also  spared  a  sight  of  the  collection 
in  the  Agricultural  Hall,  and  thus  kept  his  favorable 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  NEW  YOKE.       133 

opinion  of  the  soil  and  its  capacity.  His  report  to  his 
employers,  on  his  return  in  November  following,  was 
such  as  to  stimulate  the  company  to  send  another 
vessel  the  next  year  to  trade  with  the  natives ;  a 
trade  which  was  conducted  too  much  on  the  "  heads  I 
win,  tails  you  lose  "  system  to  be  other  than  advan- 
tageous to  the  Batavian  pedlers.  A  lew  of  the  traders 
remained,  opening  stores  in  the  slow  settlement  of 
New  Amsterdam ;  putting  up  a  windmill  in  what  is 
now  Pearl  Street,  raising  the  wind  very  easily,  and 
taking  as  generous  a  toll  from  the  Indian  grists,  as  the 
natives  now  take  from  the  strangers  who  frequent  the 
island  in  search  of  bargains.  The  settlement  grew 
then,  as  now,  by  importation ;  for  although  its  trade 
increased,  it  was  not  until  1625  that  the  first  white 
child  was  born  within  the  present  limits  of  the  State. 
The  growth  of  the  place,  however,  was  such,  that  in 
1613,  Samuel  Argal,  returning  from  an  expedition 
against  the  French  settlement  of  Port  Eoyal,  was  at- 
tracted into  the  harbor  of  New  Amsterdam,  where, 
finding  several  huts  and  the  windmill,  he  compelled 
an  allegiance,  during  his  two  days  stay,  to  England. 
The  arbitrary  principles  of  James  I.,  however,  were 
too  repulsive  to  the  sturdy  Dutch  to  make  them  ad- 
here to  this  allegiance  longer  than  the  existence  of  the 
force  which  compelled  it.  The  Republic  of  the  United 
Netherlands,  twisted  together  of  the  two  strands,  fur- 
nished the  one  by  the  religious  freedom  generated  by 
the  Reformation  under  Luther,  and  the  other  drawn 
out  by  the  mailed  hand  of  William  of  Orange  from 
the  hard  clutch  of  Philip  II.  of  Spain,  held  by  its 
strong  yet  soft  cord  the  early  emigrants  from  it  to 


134    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  NEW  YORK.        135 

New  Netherlands  to  an  affectionate  loyalty  and  love 
for  itself.  In  no  country  is  patriotism  stronger  than 
in  Holland.  Small  in  dimensions,  struggling  against 
the  whole  force  of  the  sea  on  the  north,  from  whose 
overwhelming  devastation  it  is  only  saved  by  dikes, 
anchored  by  gigantic  stones  brought  from  Norway, 
and  built  up  from  thirty  to  fifty  feet  higher  than  the 
land  they  guard ;  its  flat  meadow  surface,  ever  moist 
with  water,  divided  by  canals  which  serve  the  purposes 
both  of  fences  and  roads  in  other  lands,  and  through 
which  the  water  is  kept  flowing  by  a  wonderful  and 
hourly  worked  system  of  pumping,  —  this  little  state, 
conquered  from  the  sea  by  industry,  from  Spain  and 
the  Inquisition  by  bravery  unmatched,  from  a  moneyed 
aristocracy  by  incessant  vigilance,  stood  a  peer  among 
the  largest  and  proudest  monarchies  of  Europe.  Her 
traders  carried  their  square-rigged,  heavy  sterned  ships 
in  every  port  from  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  to  Lap- 
land ;  and  Amsterdam  drew  bills  of  exchange  against 
shipments  of  linen  and  woollen  goods,  manufactured 
by  herself,  and  of  spices  imported  from  her  East  India 
possessions,  upon  every  commercial  city  in  the  world. 
The  sea-fowl  that  drifted  across  her  bright,  sparkling 
meadows  daily  from  the  ocean,  which  she  held  at 
arm's-length,  —  although  rolling  its  white  surf  higher 
than  the  chimneys  of  her  houses,  —  could  take  a  bird's- 
eye  view  of  a  population  the  thriftiest,  of  cities  the 
most  prosperous,  of  homes  the  most  comfortable,  in 
Europe.  While  Dutch  enterprise  thus  built  up  a  hap- 
py state  at  home,  and  sent  thriving  colonies  abroad, 
her  scholars  were  advancing  the  republic  of  letters,  and 
giving  international  law  to  the  world.  Grotius  at  this 


136     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

time  defined  the  rights  and  duties  of  war,  and  helped 
to  bridle  its  atrocities  by  bits  hammered  from  the 
sickles  and  reaping-hooks  of  peace.  No  wonder,  then, 
that  the  thick-set  burghers  of  Utrecht,  Haaiiaem,  Ley- 
den,  Eotterdam,  and  Amsterdam,  although  transferred 
to  a  newer  Amsterdam,  clung  with  pride  to  their  na- 
tive land,  damp  though  it  was  in  every  pore  ;  and  that 
the  square  vrouw  gratefully  preserved  her  family  recol- 
lections along  with  her  thickly  quilted  petticoats,  her 
oleycooks,  krulers,  and  her  own  dark,  well-aired  com- 
plexion. 

The  government  of  the  settlement  was,  although 
commercial  in  its  aims  and  purposes,  very  maternal, 
whether  under  the  East  India  Company,  which 
lasted  until  1623,  or  under  the  "West  India  Com- 
pany, which  then  succeeded  it  with  larger  powers  and 
authority.  Under  the  last  company  Peter  Minuit  was 
sent  out  as  the  first  governor,  in  1625. 

The  same  year  some  enterprising  Hollanders  cour- 
ageously passed  the  East  Eiver,  and  bravely  encoiin- 
tered  the  perils  of  a  residence  in  Brooklyn,  from 
whose  Heights  so  many  now  look  clown  upon  the 
parent  city  of  New  York,  —  an  unhappy  type  of  our 
civilization  in  private  life. 

As  yet  all  was  serene  in  the  infant  colony  of  New 
Amsterdam,  as  if  the  lunar  influence  of  the  Half- 
Moon  still  shone  upon  its  peaceful  trade  and  growing 
profits.  Invitations  were  sent  to  the  people  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  and  their  children  in  the  valley 
of  the  Connecticut  to  come  and  take  tea  ;  and  they  in 
turn  courteously  asked  the  Amsterdamers  to  eat  clam- 
chowder  and  pumpkin-pie,  adding,  however,  at  the 


'  .001  / 

THE   SETTLEMENT   OF  NEW   YORK.  137 

bottom  of  the  note,  that  they  hoped,  for  reasons  which 
they  gave,  that  their  guests  would  not  bring  with  them 
any  beaver-skins  to  swap  with  the  Indians  around 
Narragansett  Bay. 

The  next  year,  1626,  Governor  Minuit  made  a  large 
real  estate  transaction,  purchasing  the  whole  island  of 
Manhattan  from  the  Indians  for  twenty-four  dollars, 
—  a  deed  without  a  name  in  the  annals  of  American 
settlements.  As  the  purchase  embraced  fourteen 
thousand  square  acres,  we  leave  it  to  the  millions  of 
advanced  juvenile  readers  who,  we  expect,  will  use 
this  history  in  schools,  to  cipher  out  the  price  per 
acre ;  while  a  still  more  forward  class  might  deter- 
mine the  amount  of  land  which  such  a  sum  would 
now  procure  in  Wall  or  Nassau  Streets.  In  1629  the 
Dutch  "West  India  Company,  in  order  to  entice  the 
Van  Eensselaers,  Van  Vechtens,  Van  Warts,  Van 
Wycks,  Brinkerhoofs,  and  other  brown-colored  dwell- 
ers at  home,  away  from  their  tulip-beds,  canals,  and 
storks,  to  the  growing  young  colony,  promised  to  any 
fifty  persons  who  would  settle  upon  it  a  tract  of  land 
upon  the  Hudson  Eiver  sixteen  miles  in  length,  annex- 
ing only  two  conditions,  —  that  the  settlers  should  pur- 
chase the  lands  of  the  Indians,  and  make  due  pro- 
vision for  the  minister  and  school-teacher. 

Under  this  promise  four  companies,  headed  each  by 
a  leader,  or  patroon,  settled  the  southern  half  of  the 
present  State  of  Delaware ;  for  the  Dutch  claim  ex- 
tended from  Cape  Henlopen  on  the  south  to  Cape 
Cod. 

The  next  year  an  agent  of  the  Van  Rensselaers 
purchased  a  tract  twelve  miles  square  below  Albany, 


138     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

paying  for  it  in  goods,  —  a  tract  which  had  many 
blank  pages,  over  which  contentious  pens  have  been 
scribbling,  sometimes  with  red  ink,  within  the  living 
memory  of  our  readers. 

With  prosperity  came,  as  usual,  care  and  trouble. 
Complaints  were  made  of  Minuit.  The  Yankees  on 
the  east,  and  the  Swedes  on  the  Delaware,  were  jeal- 
ous of  Dutch  rule,  and  stickled  for  their  own  institu- 
tions, political  and  social.  The  fort,  established  by 
Minuit  at  Hartford,  was  like  a  piano-forte  in  an  in- 
convenient place,  strongly  objected  to,  and  its  airs 
raised  a  brisk  breeze  around  it. 

Finally,  in  1633,  Peter  was  requested  to  give  up 
his  stewardship ;  and  Wouter  van  Twiller,  or  the 
Doubter,  took  the  seals  of  office  and  all  the  other  seals 
he  could  lay  hands  on.  Minuit  could  not,  however, 
remain  quiet.  Office,  as  usual,  had  produced  a  rest- 
lessness which  office  medicine  only  could  cure.  He 
went  to  Europe,  and  brought  out  a  company  of  Swedes, 
and  settled  with  them  at  Christiana,  near  Wilming- 
ton, naming  the  place  after  the  girlish  Queen  of 
Sweden.  The  prolific  Swedes  spread  northwards,  and 
gratefully  named  their  territory  New  Sweden,  —  a 
territory  stretching,  defiant  of  New  Netherlands,  and 
planting  its  northern  line  as  near  as  Trenton.  The 
Doubter  was  too  undecided  to  face  their  decided  ad- 
vances ;  and  was  replaced,  in  1638,  by  William  Kieft, 
the  third  overseer  of  the  Dutch  plantations. 

One  of  Kieft's  first  acts  was  to  protest  against  the 
Minuit,  or  Swedish  jig,  which  Peter  was  dancing  with 
his  lively  company  on  the  Delaware.  The  protest 
was,  like  so  many  others  since  issued  from  New  York, 


THE    SETTLEMENT    OF   NEW   YORK.  139 

only  made  a  note  of,  but  left  unheeded.  Sharper  pro- 
tests, backed  by  bayonets  and  knapsacks  provisioned 
with  good  long  sausages,  were,  two  years  later,  made 
against  the  Indians  of  Long  Island,  who,  egged  on  by 
the  Swedes  of  the  south,  arid  the  sleek  Pilgrims  on 
the  Connecticut,  kindled  their  fires  on  Staten  Island, 
and  threatened  to  eat  their  omelets  in  New  Amster- 
dam itself.  For  five  long  years  were  those  Indian 
eggs  and  the  colony  over  the  fire.  At  last  the  Iro- 
quois  called  away  the  coppery  cooks,  and  the  boiling 
waters  simmered  down  again.  The  colony  enlarged 
itself.  Broom-corn  waved  along  the  Mohawk  River ; 
Dutch  pigs  were  made  into  head -cheese  in  Schenec- 
tady;  and  Dutch  cabbages,  sweltered  in  large  hogs- 
heads, came  out  sour-kraut  for  purple-colored  families 
all  up  the  valley,  still  so  plentifully  sprinkled  with 
Dutch  hamlets,  baptized  with  genuine  Holland  names. 
The  warm  hearts  of  the  colonists  blunted  Indian  hos- 
tilities, as  their  thick  heads,  almost  impenetrable  to 
anything  but  three  meals  a  day,  defied  their  toma- 
hawks. 

In  1647  Kieft  was  recalled,  and  Peter  Stuyvesant 
reigned  in  his  stead.  His  combustible  temper  was 
kept  constantly  crackling,  like  a  bunch  of  fire-crackers, 
during  the  sixteen  years  he  headed  the  Dutch  settle- 
ments in  America.  His  wooden  leg,  bike  Santa  Anna's 
in  our  own  day,  seemed  ever  stirring  up  the  fires  to 
renewed  blazes.  On  all  sides  he  was  scorched.  The 
wood,  long  seasoning,  piled  up  by  the  colonists  in  Con- 
necticut, and  in  the  territory  since  divided  up  into 
Delaware,  Pennsylvania,  and  New  Jersey,  was  kin- 
dled into  a  hot  flame.  Permission  to  the  former,  in 


140     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

1650,  to  extend  their  settlements  up  to  Oyster  Bay 
on  Long  Island,  and  to  Greenwich  on  the  main-land, 
only  whet  their  appetites  for  other  kinds  of  oysters 
and  new  beds.  Five  years  later,  and  the  fiery  Stuy- 
vesant  led  a  regiment  of  six  hundred  men  against 
Christiana,  and,  reducing  it  to  silence,  brought  his 
victorious  troops  back  again ;  the  colony  now  having 
a  liberal  supply  of  candidates  for  all  its  offices  for  that 
generation.  Whether  the  burgomaster  of  New  Am- 
sterdam and  the  five  scheppens  took  occasion  of  the 
return  of  these  troops  to  vote  themselves  suppers, 
medals,  and  free  rides  around  the  island,  is  very 
doubtful,  as  contemporary  accounts  are  mute  on  the 
subject. 

At  last  even  Dutch  patience  became  weary  of  wars 
with  the  Indians  and  disputes  with  all  the  neighbor- 
ing colonies.  The  growing  political  privileges,  won  by 
the  vigilant  perseverance  of  those  colonies,  —  the  right 
of  representation  in  assemblies,  —  the  larger  immuni- 
ties from  home  taxation,  attracted  their  attention,  so 
that  in  1664,  when  Charles  II.  granted,  however 
unjustly,  to  his  brother,  the  Duke  of  York,  the 
whole  country,  from  the  Connecticut  River  to  the 
Delaware,  —  including,  of  course,  the  Dutch  settle- 
ments, —  and  Nichols,  the  duke's  lieutenant,  in  Sep- 
tember of  that  year,  anchoring  before  New  Amster- 
dam, asked  the  peppery  Stuyvesant  to  hand  over,  the 
wishes  of  the  inhabitants  for  change  was  so  great, 
that  the  governor,  although  disposed  to  resist,  found 
no  backers ;  and  so,  after  stumping  around  for  several 
hours  among  his  councillors,  was  obliged  to  cut  his 
stick  into  a  pen,  and  sign  a  document,  transferring 


THE   SETTLEMENT   OF  NEW   YORK.  141 

the  American  Empire  of  their  High  Mightinesses,  the 
States  General,  to  the  royal  English  Duke.  So  ended 
the  political  dominion  of  Holland  in  America.  The 
iron  feet  of  the  statue  were,  however,  firmly  planted 
on  the  soil  of  New  York,  although  the  upper  parts  of 
the  figure  have  been  cast  in  other  metals,  and  moulded 
by  Saxon,  Celtic,  Teutonic,  and  Gallic  hands. 

The  last  Dutch  governor,  let  us  add,  gracefully  sub- 
mitted to  the  English  sway,  living  in  his  ample  house 
in  the  Bowery  until  his  death,  happy  in  his  farm, 
which  then  grew  chestnuts  instead  of  men,  and  was 
tracked  by  cows  and  calves,  sheep  and  lambs,  instead 
of  the  iron  tracks  which  now  spike  New  York  to  its 
rocky  bed,  whose  sheets  are  balance  sheets,  and  whose 
covering  is  the  dirty  blankets  which  its  unconscien- 
tious  Mrs.  Gamps  throw  over  her. 


142 


CHAPTER    VI. 

THE   SETTLEMENT  OF   NEW  JERSEY. 
A  spirited  Sketch  of  the  Way  in  which  it  was  done,  and  the  Results. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA. 

Governments  in  their  Action  like  Pianos.  —  The  Reason ;  and  illustrating 
Examples.  —  Varieties  in  the  Make-ups  of  the  different  Settlers  in  the 
Colonies.  —  Character  of  Penn,  and  why  it  improves  by  Age.  —  His 
Accomplishments.  —  His  first  Visit  to  America  in  1681.  —  Tall  Talk 
and  Peace. —  Philadelphia,  its  early  and  late  Characteristics.— Dela- 
ware sets  up  for  herself.  —  Penn  in  Prison.  —  Again  in  Pennsylvania. 
—  Returns  to  England  by  the  Philadelphia  Line.  —  Pennsylvania  leaps 
into  the  Eighteenth  Century,  and  what  she  does  there. 

GOVERNMENTS  and  states,  like  pianos,  go  ac- 
cording to  the  works  originally  put  into  them. 
Unlike  the  grand-action  instruments  of  the  Carolinas, 
manufactured  in  the  princely  factoiy  of  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury  and  John  Locke,  dissimilar  to  the  violin  move- 
ment of  the  New  England  States,  the  banjo  airs  of 
Virginia,  or  "the  harp  with  a  thousand  strings"  set 
up  in  New  York,  the  government  of  Pennsylvania 
combined  the  sweetness  of  the  seolian  harp  and  the 
free  harmonious  breathings  of  the  accordion.  And 
the  music  which  Penn  drew  from  it  was  such  as 
"  soothed  the  savage  breast " ;  for  Pennsylvania  was 
the,  only  American  settlement  which  never  heard  the 
whirr  of  the  Indian  arrow  through  her  woods,  nor 
the  sullen  blow  of  the  death-dealing  tomahawk  in  the 
settler's  hut. 

To  complete  the  mosaic  pavement  of  our  American 
house,  all  kinds  of  materials  seemed  necessary.     In 


PORTKAIT  OF  PENN. 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA.      145 

South  Carolina,  French  Huguenots ;  in  Georgia,  Ogle- 
thorpe  the  loyalist,  with  loyal  settlers ;  in  North 
Carolina,  English  yeomanry;  in  Virginia,  supporters 
of  the  Episcopal  Establishment  and  the  partisans  of 
the  Stuarts;  in  Maryland,  Eoman  Catholics,  imbued 
with  the  largest  spirit  of  toleration ;  in  Delaware  and 
New  Jersey,  the  countrymen  of  Gustavus  Adolphus, 
alive  with  Protestantism  and  mechanical  invention  ; 
in  New  England,  the  representatives  of  Presbyterian- 
ism,  Independency,  and  Anabaptists,  in  church  in- 
tolerantly tolerant  of  those  who  differed  from  them, 
and  jealous  liberals  in  state  matters,  —  an  epitome  of 
the  various  dissenting  and  freedom-claiming  classes  in 
England  during  the  important  era  of  the  decade  which 
preceded  and  succeeded  the  Commonwealth ;  in  New 
York,  the  sturdy  burghers  of  Holland,  commercial, 
Protestant,  and  free,  mixed  with-  Englishmen  who 
believed  in  kingly  prerogative  as  they  did  in  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles ;  and  now  the  drab  peaceful 
Quakers,  cherishing  the  inner  light,  simple  in  speech 
and  garb,  wise  in  their  worldly  wisdom,  yet  harmless 
as  doves,  firm,  yet  not  defiant,  keeping  on  their  hats  in 
presence  of  dignitaries,  yet  servants  to  the  lowliest  in 
the  bonds  of  truth  and  love. 

William  Penn  is  one  of  the  few  characters,  which, 
wine-like,  improves  by  age.  His  cask  was  filled  with 
pure  juices  of  the  grape,  grown  in  honest  soils,  and 
ripened  by  the  natural  sun.  Tested  in  every  way,  it 
shows  no  adulterations. 

Descended  from  a  father  at  once  gifted  by  nature 
and  ennobled  by  services  to  the  state,  which  it  could 
not  requite ;  himself  favored  with  large  wealth  ;  bred 
7  j 


146     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

at  Oxford  University ;  a  law  student  of  Lincoln's 
Inn ;  a  sagacious  and  observing  traveller  over  all 
Europe ;  skilled  in  all  manly  accomplishments,  in- 
cluding swimming  and  the  use  of  the  broadsword; 
the  friend  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  of  Algernon  Sidney, 
and  Lord  William  Bussell, —  he  exhibited  that  rare 
union,  a  moral  courage  that  dared  to  live  out  his  con- 
victions, although  counter  to  those  with  whom  he 
associated  and  although  leading  him  to  prison  and 
severe  persecution,  and  a  gentleness  of  speech  and 
manner  that  persuaded  all  whom  he  met,  not  only  of 
his  own  personal  honesty,  but  of  the  truth  of  his  prin- 
ciples. 

In  1681  he  obtained  from  Charles  II.  a  grant  of 
all  the  lands  embraced  in  the  present  limits  of  Penn- 
sylvania ;  and  in  the  following  autumn  he  came  out 
to  prospect  his  large  unfenced  farm.  Sailing  up  the 
Delaware,  over  fins  whose  ancestors  had  preceded  him 
by  centuries,  and  between  banks  colonized  sparsely  by 
Finns  and  Swedes  thirty-nine  years  before,  he  landed 
at  New  Castle. 

His  open,  sunny  face,  then  browned  with  thirty- 
eight  summers,  warmed  even  the  Indians  toward  him, 
in  the  frosty  month  of  November ;  and  thus  trickled 
their  confidence  and  trust :  "  You  are  our  brothers. 
"We  will  leave  a  broad  path  for  you  and  us  to  walk  in. 
If  an  Englishman  falls  asleep  in  the  path,  the  Indian 
shall  pass  him  by  and  say :  '  He  is  an  Englishman  ;  he 
is  asleep ;  let  him  alone.'  The  path  shall  be  plain ; 
there  shall  not  be  in  it  a  stump  to  hurt  the  feet." 

At  the  junction  of  the  Schuylkill  and  Delaware 
rivers,  —  a  triangle  since  often  worked  at  by  people 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA. 


147 


*«^ 

^IWi  > 


<*$»* 


148    THE   COMIC   H1ST011Y   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

who,  wanting  his  simplicity,  have  tried  so  to  draw 
their  lines  as  to  prove  that  an  acute  angle  is  larger 
than  the  other  two,  even  if  those  two  be  very  obtuse, 
—  at  this  place  he  halted  to  work  out  the  problem  of 
a  city  to  be  governed  by  brotherly  love.  He  found 
clumps  of  pine,  chestnut,  and  walnut  trees,  —  names 
which  grew  to  the  streets  which  displaced  them.  Dis- 
liking crowded  towns,  which  he  had  found  to  be  but 
nurseries  of  vice,  he  desired  his  city  to  be  planted  with 
gardens  round  each  house,  so  as  to  form  "  a  greene 
couutrie  towne."  The  jealous  rivals  of  the 'Quaker 
Emporium  assert  that  he  succeeded  in  carrying  out 
his  plan. 

He  was  not  pen-urious;  but  paid  the  natives  for 
their  lands.  Peace,  Penn,  and  plenty  prevailed 
through  all  the  borders  of  the  baby  settlement.  In 
two  years,  twenty -five  hundred  wood-colored  bonnets 
and  broad-brims  could  be  counted  of  a  Sunday  in  the 
loving  city.  Unlike  most  of  the  other  young  settle- 
ments, the  neck  of  land  between  the  two  rivers  on 
which  Penn's  pet  stood  was  not  wrung  by  famine 
or  by  the  hand  of  political  oppression.  In  March, 
1683,  Penn  granted  to  the  assembly,  held  in  the  grow^l 
ing  town,  an  ample  charter  of  liberty.  The  next  year 
he  made  a  trip  to  Europe,  taking  the  "  Philadelphia 
line,"  which,  fortunately  for  him,  did  not  break  before 
he  reached  shore. 

In  1691  the  three  counties,  now  forming  the  State 
of  Delaware,  and  of  which  Penn  had  procured  a  con- 
veyance, took  it  in  their  heads  to  try  their  own  luck  at 
housekeeping,  and  set  up  a  separate  kitchen  of  their 
own.  Penn  wished  them  pot-luck ;  and  off  they  went 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA.      149 

in  high  glee,  cultivating  their  own  Pea  Patch  and  sow- 
ing their  own  oats  to  their  heart's  content. 

The  next  year  Penn  was  deprived  of  his  government 
and  shut  up  in  prison  for  two  years.  For  some  time 
William  and  Mary,  it  was  supposed,  had  a  taste  for 
his  head  served  up  cb  la  John  the  Baptist ;  but  this 
dish  was  at  last  thought  to  be  too  expensive  for  the 
English  constitution,  and  so  the  ruffles  around  Penn's 
neck  were  untroubled. 

In  1699  Penn  again  visited  his  North  American 
estate,  took  an  account  of  stock,  gave  presents  of  all 
the  political  privileges  they  asked  for,  and  went  home 
again,  for  the  last  time,  in  high  feather. 

Meanwhile  the  young  colony  leaped  vigorously  over 
into  the  eighteenth  century,  found  its  supply  of  anthra- 
cite coal  sufficient  for  a  good  house-warming,  invited 
over  Dutch,  Germans,  Norwegians,  and  Swedes,  with 
their  large  horses,  heavily  tired  wagons,  and  never- 
tiring  heavy  wives,  who  settled  down  on  the  whole 
territory  so  solidly  that  neither  they  nor  it  could  ever 
be  moved  from  that  day  to  this. 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 

THE  COLONIES  IN  THE  UPPER  HALF  OF  THE  SEVEN- 
TEENTH CENTURY. 

The  Young  Colonies  watched  by  the  "  Old  Folks  at  Home."  —Required 
to  furnish  Inventories  of  their  Property.  —  Old  People  particular  as  to 
Shops  where  the  Youngsters  traded. — Several  Articles  of  Political 
Housekeeping,  as  Printing-Presses,  Jury-Boxes,  etc.,  not  allowed. — 
Some  Favorites  among  the  Children.  —  The  first  American  Ring.  — 
Cromwell  as  a  Step- Father.  — The  Atlantic  Swimming-Bath.  —  PolhV 
ical  Rights  jarred  off  the  Parent  Tree;  others  fell  when  ripe.  —  Some 
Proprietors  sell  out  to  raise  Money  for  Costs.  —  General  Thaw  in  High 
Places.  _  Legislative  Mills  with  two  Runs  of  Stone.  —  Woman's  Rights 
in  Capsules.  —  How  hard  Puritan  Wood  got  softer.  —  Episcopal  Race- 
Courses  enlarged.  —  A  Black  Frost  curls  up  the  Green  Leaves  of  the 
Charters.  —  What  Sir  Edmund  Andros  swallowed  and  the  Fit  of  In- 
digestion which  followed.  —  Effect  of  European  Honsecleaning  in  setting 
Colonial  Brooms  in  Motion.  —  Xew  York  swept  into  the  English  Pan. 
—  Result  of  James  II.'s  Over-stay  in  Paris.  —  Slaps  in  the  Face  of 
Canada  and  their  Return.  —  How  Public  Events  tell  on  Family  Mat- 
ters tolled  long  and  loud.  —  People  occasionally  subject  to  Scarlet 
Fever  and  Fourth  of  July,  but  can't  live  on  either. — Kidd  at  Sea; 
takes  off  a  few  People.  —  How  the  Deficiency  was  supplied.  —  Xum- 
ber  of  Colonists  at  close  of  Seventeenth  Century.  —  Would  have  been 
more  had  Chicago  started.  —  Colonial  Colts  at  the  Bars  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century. 

BY  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
young  colonial  damsels  from  England,  Holland, 
Sweden,  and  Germany  had,  in  the  main,  obtained 
comfortable  and  satisfactory  settlements  along  the  At- 
lantic slopes.  The  jealous  "  old  folks  at  home  "  kept 
a  strict  watch  on  their  doings,  and  sent  servants  to 
look  after  their  ways.  Here  and  there  some  stolen 


THE   COLONIES.  151 

interviews  with  that  very  disreputable  acquaintance, 
Legislative  Liberty,  had  been  detected;  and  the  ser- 
vants were  especially  charged  to  keep  both  eyes  upon 
any  renewal  of  such  improprieties.  Frequent  inven- 
tories of  property  were  insisted  on.  All  the  house- 
hold stuff  was  required  to  be  bought  at  the  home 
shops  ;  and,  what  hurt  the  feelings  and  interests  of  the 
young  people  more  than  anything  else,  they  were  for- 
bidden even  to  send  back  what  they  did  not  want  to  use 
themselves,  unless  in  ships  built  and  despatched  from 
England  for  them.  There  were  some  articles,  as  print- 
ing-presses, jury-boxes,  etc.,  which  were  deemed  by  the 
anxious  parents  as  particularly  unnecessary  and  even 
improper.  Two  whims  there  were,  which  the  young- 
sters had  of  late  got  into  their  heads,  that  they  were 
repeatedly  enjoined  to  banish,  once  for  all :  namely,  the 
notion  of  electing  somebody  to  go  and  meet  somebody 
else  and  have  a  talk  over  that  foolish  and  altogether 
unsatisfactory  subject  the  taxes  ;  and  that  other  equally 
absurd  fancy  of  counting  over  occasionally  the  loose 
change  collected  for  public  purposes.  They  told  them 
that  such  things  were  above  their  years,  and  that,  in 
fact,  they  knew  nothing  about  them ;  and  moreover, 
that  such  whimsies  had  made  a  great  deal  of  trouble 
even  among  the  wiser  heads  on  the  old  island,  and,  if 
indulged  in,  would  be  sure  to  bring  their  progeny  into 
bad  habits  and  to  worse  ends.  These  injunctions  and 
warnings  of  course  only  increased  curiosity,  led  to 
talks  across  the  dinner-table  and  in  the  evenings  after 
the  day's  work  was  over.  The  more  they  talked  it 
over,  the  more,  of  course,  they  set  their  hearts  upon 
having  the  forbidden  fruit.  It  was  found  that  Vir- 


152    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

ginia  had  enjoyed  the  dangerous  luxuries  of  sending 
two  men  from  every  one  of  her  eleven  boroughs  to  do 
botli  these  improper  things,  ever  since  she  was  twelve 
years  old.  She,  too,  had  been  permitted  to  have  a 
jury-box,  and  liked  the  music  of  it  right  well,  although 
some  of  the  twelve  strings  sometimes  got  out  of  order, 
and  the  instrument  occasionally  played  too  long  when" 
badly  wound  up.  Favoritism  in  a  family  is  never 
pleasant  for  the  unfavored  ones.  The  others  could  not 
see  why  they  should  not  have  4what  Virginia  was 
allowed.  The  subject  became  at  last  a  sore  one,  and 
several  times  ended  in  angry  flushes  and  muttered 
adjectives  that  went  off  without  any  nouns  to  touch 
them  ;  some  into  the  air,  and  some  —  we  are  forced  to 
say  —  right  into  the  faces  of  the  old  people. 

Cromwell,  that  brusk  English  step-father,  who, 
after  the  sudden  taking  off  of  his  predecessor,  Charles 
I.,  vigorously  seized  the  cold  hand  of  Albion,  had  his 
favorites  among  the  step-children,  the  New-England- 
ers.  Yet  he  did  not  hesitate  to  trounce  them  as 
soundly  as  he  did  Virginia  and  the  two  Carolinas, 
whenever  they  set  up  their  wills  against  his.  It  was 
he  who,  in  1651,  tied  up  all  the  colonies  by  those 
leading-strings,  the  Navigation  Acts.  When  Charles 
II.  came  into  the  family,  these  colonial  cords  were  not 
cut,  but  multiplied  and  tied  into  knots,  not  at  all 
sailor  fashion.  In  fact,  whoever  ruled  the  house, 
Commonwealth,  Stuart,  or  Orange,  strengthened  and 
doubled  these  vexatious  marine  strings,  until  finally 
father  and  children  were  threatened  with  the  fate  of 
Laocoon. 

The  large  swimming-bath  of  the  Atlantic,  so  near 


THE   COLONIES. 


153 


7* 


154    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE    UNITED   STATES. 

their  doors,  sorely  tempted  the  young  swimmers ;  but 
the  old  people  insisted  upon  nothing  so  much  as  the 
maxim,  not  to  go  into  the  waters  of  commerce  until 
they  had  learned  to  swim,  and  never  to  begin  to  learn 
an  art  so  perilous  to  —  themselves.  In  fact,  the  entire 
maritime  policy  of  England  towards  the  colonies  was 
very  dry  nursing  on  very  wet  principles. 

At  one  time,  Virginia  was  the  pet,  and  got  several 
sugar-plums  from  royal  bounty.  Then  Connecticut 
came  in  for  some  caressing.  The  younger  AVinthrop 
presented  to  Charles  II.,  in  1662,  a  petition  for  a  new 
toy,  —  a  charter.  He  would  have  been  refused,  but 
that  he  slipped  in,  at  the  same  time,  a  ring  given  to  his 
own  grandfather  by  the  father  of  Charles,  which  so 
pleased  the  dress-loving  king,  that  he  gave  to  Con- 
necticut one  of  the  best  charter  hobby-horses  ever 
seen  at  that  time  in  America.  This,  it  may  be  re- 
marked, is  the  earliest  example  in  our  history  of  what 
"  a  ring  "  can  effect. 

We  cannot  record  in  detail  the  successive  struggles 
of  the  Colonies  to  free  themselves  from  political 
and  commercial  restrictive  rules,  —  for  rights  of  repre- 
sentation in  assemblies  of  their  own,  for  the  privi- 
lege of  taxing  themselves,  and  spending  their  own 
assessments,  and  for  the  many  solid  and  large  free- 
doms which  we  now  enjoy  without  question  or  fear. 
The  story  of  the  way  in  which  the  cellar  was  dug, 
through  obstructions  of  root  and  stone,  the  walls 
sunk,  the  beams  of  the  lower  floor,  hewn  out  amid  dis- 
couragements and  opposition,  laid  and  primed,  ought 
not  to  be  otherwise  than  pleasant,  even  when  re- 
hearsed to  those  who  have  long  and  securely  revelled 


THE    COLONIES.  155 

in  all  the  comforts  and  luxuries  of  the  completed 
building ;  in  its  hot  and  cold  water  baths  of  free  dis- 
cussion ;  the  numerous  call-pipes  through  the  wall,  for 
public  servants ;  the  cedar  closets  for  the  best  clothes 
of  liberty  ;  the  iron  safe  for  the  family  silver  or  green- 
backs ;  the  gas-pipes  of  illuminating  knowledge ;  and 
the  varied  upholstery  to  soothe  labor-aching  limbs,  or 
to  gratify  luxurious  and  even  extravagant  tastes.  But 
space,  like  nobility,  obliges ;  and  although,  like  those 
experts  who  write  the  Lord's  Prayer  on  a  sixpence,  we 
can  condense  Genesis  on  the  smallest  historic  disk,  we 
cannot  crowd  all  creation  on  the  rim  of  the  same 
piece.  Speaking  in  a  general  way,  however,  we  may 
affirm  that  for  forty  years  preceding  the  accession  of 
James  II.  in  1685,  the  Colonies,  on  the  whole,  steadily 
gained  from  jealous  political  privilege  and  chartered 
monopoly  some  of  the  rights  enjoyed  at  home.  As 
these  rights  fell,  one  after  another,  upon  colonial 
soil,  they  were  -carefully  secured  by  strong  hands. 
Sometimes  they  were  jarred  suddenly  from  the  parent 
tree  by  the  iron  hand  of  war.  Sometimes  they  fell 
carelessly,  like  great,  golden  pippins,  over  the  royal 
enclosure  into  the  king's  highway,  ripe  and  well 
flavored.  Sometimes  they  matured  naturally  under 
the  very  eyes  of  those  keepers  of  the  royal  Transatlan- 
tic preserves,  —  the  colonial  governors,  —  and  when 
mellow,  were  seized  and  hurried  out  of  reach  until  it 
was  safe  to  give  them  to  the  hungry  people. 

Thus,  in  various  ways,  by  different  hands  and  from 
different  parts  of  the  colonial  orchard,  the  precious 
fruit  was  gathered  for  present  or  future  use. 

In  some  of  the  plantations  the  proprietors,  those 


156     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 
'•  Gentlemen  of  England,  who  sat  at  home  in  ease," 

expecting  their  stone  ships  to  come  in,  filled  with 
promised  colonial  stuff  for  presents  to  their  children, 
became  tired  of  waiting,  and  sold  out  their  large  airy 
bills  of  lading  for  very  small  earthly  crowns  sterling. 
In  other  Colonies  the  heirs  of  the  original  grantees, 
after  spending  all  their  ready  means  in  lawsuits  with 
the  hard-working  settlers,  videlicet,  "  squatters,"  guilty 
in  complainants'  eyes,  not  only  of  "disturbing  the 
peace  of  our  lord  the  King,"  but  of  attempting  to 
appropriate  unlawfully  a  piece  of  his  colonial  king- 
dom, compromised,  as  other  parties  have  before  done, 
for  sums  barely  sufficient  to  cover  the  costs  of  litiga- 
tion. In  a  few  instances,  suitors  to  the  affections  of 
the  coy  colonial  heiresses,  thinking  by  courtly  ways  to 
acquire  their  landed  possessions  and  the  common-law 
right  to  govern  their  persons,  were  dismissed  with 
good-natured  assurances  that  they  should  continue  to 
look  upon  them  as  friends,  but  declined  any  more 
intimate  relationships.  In  a  few  other  cases  still  — 
like  those  of  William  Penn,  Eoger  Williams,  and 
Cecil  Calvert  —  the  tenants  were  freely  and  generously 
left  to  manage  their  civil  and  political  affairs,  without 
suit,  let,  or  hindrance,  while  individual  conscience  was 
erected  into  a  high  court  of  equity,  with  supreme 
jurisdiction  in  things  spiritual. 

Representative  government  took  at  first  different 
forms.  In  some  of  the  settlements  legislative  grists 
were  put  into  a  mortar  and  pounded  out  into  a  simple, 
healthy,  easily  digested,  coarse  meal.  Maryland  and 
Massachusetts  set  up  more  luxurious  mills,  provided 
with  double  runs  of  stone,  —  an  upper  and  lower  one, 


THE   COLONIES.  157 

which  was  supposed  to  grind  out  a  finer  kind  of  legis- 
lative flour.  The  brand,  we  need  scarcely  add,  is  now 
the  popular  American  one,  and  is  being,  in  limited 
amounts,  exported  for  foreign  use. 

In  some  of  these  establishments  "  bolts  "  were  now 
and  then  introduced,  by  some  bran-new  representative 
miller,  and  expectations  were  immediately  held  out 
to  the  anxious  customers  of  better  flour,  and  of  a 
whiter  color,  —  expectations,  we  regret  to  add,  that 
rarely  came  to  anything  except  increased  fatness  to 
the  miller's  live  stock,  always  grunting  and  grubbing 
around  the  mill  doors. 

Woman's  rights,  too,  thus  early  took  root,  sprouting 
out  like  young  shoots  from  the  old  rotting  stumps 
of  a  decaying  civilization.  Anne  Hutchinson,  —  not 
Dickinson,  —  grieved  in  soul  by  the  exclusion  of  her 
sex  from  the  right  to  discuss  and  criticise,  at  the  weekly 
meeting  of  the  congregation,  the  last  Sunday's  dis- 
course, —  a  right  now  practised  all  over  the  world,  — 
created  by  her  fiery  eloquence  such  a  blaze  in  Massa- 
chusetts, that  she  soon  made  the  Colony  too  hot  for 
her.  Sir  Harry  Vane,  strange  to  say,  did  not  turn  the 
way  that  the  wind  blew ;  but,  although  a  governor 
and  a  baronet,  veered  against  the  current  of  hot  air. 
Let  reformers  pluck  from  these  pages  a  fragrant  leaf 
pressed  and  preserved  for  their  reading  when  faint. 
It  was  from  this  little  seed-capsule,  enwrapping  a 
precious  life,  warmed  by  the  heat  of  a  woman's  mind, 
there  sprang  up  in  a  few  years  that  beautiful  flower  of 
spiritual  liberty  that  now  sends  its  rippling  odor  from 
sea  to  sea. 

Thus  in  all  high  places  of  political  po\ver  there  was 


158        THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UU1TED  STATES. 


THE   COLONIES.  159 

a  general  thaw  of  royal  prerogative  and  proprietarial 
claim ;  and  popular  rights  trickled  down  upon  the 
plain  below.  Galileo,  in  1633,  was  condemned  for 
asserting  that  the  earth  was  a  confirmed  revolutionist ; 
yet  even  fifty  years  after  there  might  have  been 
wafted  back  over  his  tomb  on  the  Arno,  from  the 
shores  of  the  James,  the  Susquehanna,  and  even  from 
the  Merrimack,  a  wind-gram,  iterating  his  own  protest- 
ing words,  "  E  pur  il  se  muove." 

Yes,  the  world  did  move  !  Even  that  hard  part  of  it, 
crusted  over  with  stern  though  earnest  religious  dog- 
mas, began  to  stir.  The  austerity  of  Puritan  faith, 
conscientious  yet  severe,  which  had  worn  the  russet 
grimness  which  its  own  persecution  in  England  had 
gathered  around  it  —  as  hard  woods,  lying  in  damp, 
imprisoning  places,  become  clothed  with  fungus 
growths  —  began  to  feel  some  of  the  sunny  effects 
of  the  Hutchinson  illumination.  In  Virginia  time 
and  free  discussion  were  wearing  away  the  granite 
barriers  within  which  its  legislation  and  loyalty  had 
always  sought  to  hem  into  a  single  channel,  the  Epis- 
copal, the  diverging  streams  of  religious  convictions. 

The  narrow  bigotries  of  the  times,  showing  them- 
selves under  different  aspects,  sprang  naturally  out  of 
the  various  soils  in  which  the  seeds  had  taken  root. 
The  early  colonists  of  New  England,  escaping  like  the 
Jews  from  Egyptian  bondage,  and  lit  by  flaming 
torches  and  cloudy  providences  to  their  promised 
land,  compelled  every  one,  Canaanite  and  Quaker, 
independent  Philistine  and  non-conforming  Episco- 
palian, to  bring  offerings  to  their  cherished  altar,  under 
pain  of  banishment  to  the  wilderness  beyond.  Those 


160   THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

of  Virginia,  on  the  contrary,  bringing  with  them  their 
own  lares  and  penates  from  their  father's  house,  and 
fearing  the  introduction  of  strange  deities,  fenced  in  the 
sacred  images  with  sharp  picket-palings  set  by  legal 
enactment.  Over  both,  however,  the  new  Evangel  of 
toleration  began  to  break,  and  voices  of  those  "  crying 
in  the  wilderness,"  divinely  sent,  cleaving  with  gentle 
strokes  the  consciences  of  thoughtful  men,  and  heard 
around  the  altar  and  inside  the  guarded  pickets, 
heralded  the  coming  Emanuel. 

We  have  said  that,  up  to  the  time  of  the  accession 
of  James  II.  in  1685,  the  fruits  of  civil  liberty  were 
gradually  maturing  in  the  growing  settlements. 

Immediately  after  that  event,  however,  a  chilling 
black  frost  fell  upon  them,  rolling  up  the  green  leaves 
of  the  charters  and  threatening  to  kill  outright  all  the 
chance-sown  trees,  as  well  as  the  more  promising  cul- 
tivated grafts.  During  the  three  and  a  half  years  that 
this  blight  continued,  the  greater  part  of  the  popular 
governments  were  stunted  or  destroyed.  The  Con- 
necticut rocking-horse,  conjured  from  King  Charles  II. 
by  Winthrop's  ring,  was  hid  away  in  a  hollow  oak  at 
Hartford.  Sir  Edmund  Andros,  a  man  of  narrow 
spirit  and  keen  temper,  was  sent  out  with  instructions 
so  large  that  he  swallowed  up  the  governments  of  all 
the  New  England  Colonies  and  New  York.  A  severe 
fit  of  indigestion  followed,  acidulating  and  fermenting, 
taking  away  the  general  appetite,  and  causing  painful 
memories  of  the  time  when  there  were  no  heart-burn- 
ings and  dangerous  blood-rushings  headward.  And  so, 
when  in  1688  the  Ke volution  brought  in  the  Orange 

o  <"> 

Prince,  health  bloomed  again  on  the  colonial  cheek, 


THE   COLONIES.  161 

and  the  constitution  seemed  to  acquire  a  more  vigor- 
ous tone  than  ever. 

The  colonists  had  early  learned  the  strength  which 
comes  from  union.  From  1643  onwards  for  forty 
years  the  New  England  settlements  joined  hands 
with  each  other  against  the  French  of  New  France 
and  Acadia,  the  French  Indian  allies,  and  the  Dutch 
of  New  York ;  and  while,  like  man  and  wife,  they  had 
their  own  healthy  troubles,  curtain  lectures,  poutings 
and  make-ups,  they  stoutly  defended  the  common 
home  against  all  neighboring  invasion.  Persons  once 
married  are  not  apt  to  forget  it,  nor  cease  to  sigh, 
after  the  tie  is  dissolved,  for  the  benefits  which  accrued 
from  it.  The  colonial  widowers  found  it  easier  after- 
wards to  contract  a  new  union  than  the  bachelor 
communities  to  form  their  first  match.  Eight  years 
after  the  death  of  the  first  union  the  bereaved  New- 
Englanders  went  out  on  a  second  courtship,  —  the 
trysting -place  being  New  York,  —  and  there  agreed 
upon  a  sort  of  runaway  match  to  Canada.  The  honey- 
moon journey  was  not  as  pleasant  as  bridal  trips 
through  the  Thousand  Isles  to  Montreal  and  Quebec 
now  are.  In  fact,  although  bound  for  Quebec,  and 
even  reaching  it,  they  were  not  suffered  by  the  French 
to  enter  it.  They  returned  not  over  well  pleased  with 
each  other,  but  particularly  out  of  temper  with  the 
armed  discourtesy  of  the  French. 

This  little  trip  away  from  home  was  not  the  first 
nor  the  last  which  the  Colonies  were  led  to  make.  In 
fact,  our  people  from  the  very  beginning  seem  to  have 
been  curiously  addicted  to  foreign  missionary  efforts. 
They  acquired  the  passion  at  the  outset  from  European 


1G2     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


suggestions.  Whenever  the  state  skeins  there  got 
into  a  tangle,  some  of  the  outside  threads  were  sure 
to  run  into  a  dreadful  kink  here.  No  sooner  was 
there  a  scrubbing  and  house-cleaning  among  the  old 
folks  on  the  Thames,  Seine,  Scheldt,  or  Rhine,  than 
the  brooms  were  got  out  on  the  Hudson,  the  James, 
and  Connecticut,  and  up  they  all  went  at  that  stand- 
ing bother  of  our  colonial  housewives,  the  nest  of  li vely 
French  flies  in  our  northeast  corner,  or  at  those  old 
yellow-legged  Dutch  hornets  that  had  settled  down  on 
Manhattan  and  Long  Island.  The  war  between  the 
English  and  Dutch  Commonwealths  in  1652,  which 
sent  Van  Tromp's  broom  over  the  seas,  brushing  down 
the  red  spots  of  St.  George,  set  the  colonial  sweepers 
at  work.  The  big  and  little  brooms  were,  however, 
put  aside  after  two  years ;  but  in  1663  they  were  all 
seized  again,  and  by  a  single  dash  New  York  was 
swept  into  the  English  pan. 

Amid  all  this  dust  and  refuse  matter  of  war  one 
can  pick  out  now  and  then  some  stray  grains  of  shin- 
ing value.  Such  was  Mary's  and  William's  College, 
established  in  Virginia  in  1693,  making  the  second 
bright  college  speck  in  America.  Such  were  the  gold 
and  silver  ores  of  thought  found  by  George  Fox, 
Increase  Mather,  and  others,  mixed  with  brown  earth 
or  imbedded  in  quartz,  but  valuable  in  any  collection. 
Such,  too,  the  loving  messages  sent  from  Friends  in 
England  to  their  brethren  here,  which  we  can  now 
pick  from  that  colonial  dust-heap  where  they  shine 
like  plates  of  mica. 

The  Orange  William  could  not  of  course  long  bloom 
in  peace  in  his  new  royal  bed.  His  father-in-law, 


THE   COLONIES.  163 

James  II.,  had  fled  across  the  channel  to  Louis  XIV., 
and  was  selfishly  entertained  by  him  at  Paris.  Wil- 
liam objected  —  as  some  people  do  nowadays  —  to 
his  relative's  prolonged  stay  in  that  fascinating  capital. 
This  little  unpleasantness  resulted  in  a  war  which 
lasted  until  1697.  Of  course  the  Colonies  were  highly 
offended  too;  and  as  soon  as  the  two  rather  elderly 
gentlemen  at  Versailles  and  St.  James  had  taken  snuff, 
there  was  a  general  sneeze  from  Passamaquoddy  Bay 
to  the  Altamaha  Paver.  Getting  thus  very  red  in  the 
face,  the  colonists  flung  out  their  hands,  which  of 
course  hit  Canada  right  in  the  face.  The  French 
resented  the  slap,  and  pommelled  away  at  New  York, 
New  Hampshire,  and  Massachusetts,  scratching  off 
many  scalps  at  Dover,  Schenectady,  and  along  the 
Penobscot.  A  regular  settler  was  aimed  back  by  the 
Colonies  at  the  very  nob  of  the  French  settlements, 
Quebec.  An  arm-ament,  directed  by  Sir  William 
Phipps,  was  flung  out  towards  the  St.  Lawrence,  but  a 
skilful  fence  by  the  alert  French  warded  off  the  blow. 
To  heat  the  pokers  in  these  fires,  kindled  in  Europe, 
blown  over  to  this  side  and  fed  here  by  wood  fur- 
nished by  the  colonists,  and  often  hauled  from  a  great 
distance,  was  laborious  and  expensive.  But  this  was 
a  small  care  for  England  who  coolly  took  out  the  irons 
when  well  aglow. 

Little,  however,  did  she  then  imagine  that  the 
young  arms  thus  smiting  the  irons  on  these  French 
and  Indian  anvils  were  making  and  hardening  muscle 
that  would  one  day  resist  her  own  heavy  and  long- 
reaching  blows.  Slowly,  slowly,  but  surely.  Wheat 
left  in  Egyptian  cases  for  quite  other  purposes,  three 


1G4    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

thousand  years  ago,  patiently  sleeping,  sprouts  at  the 
call  of  the  sun  in  after  centuries.  The  colonial  seeds 
carelessly  or  selfishly  cast  by  royal  hands  into  furrows, 
seeming  like  very  rugged  and  ugly  blotches  on  the 
wide  wintry-looking  fields  of  North  America,  quick- 
ened in  less  than  a  hundred  years  by  the  rain-patters, 
were  to  wave  in  ridges  as  green  and  blossoming,  as 
English  hedges  in  June. 

None  of  our  illuminated  readers  will  fall  down  into 
that  exalted,  but  still  very  common  mistake,  of  sup- 
posing that  the  great  mass  of  the  men,  women,  and 
children,  living  here  in  the  latter  half  of  that  seven- 
teenth century,  were  all  the  while,  or  indeed  to  any 
great  extent,  occupied  by,  interested  in,  or  even  meas- 
urably affected  by,  these  large  public  events.  The  old 
man  who  thought  it  strange  that  all  the  millions  of 
people  in  the  Eoman  Empire,  Avho  he  naturally  sup- 
posed, from  his  reading  of  history,  were  present  at  the 
killing  of  Csesar,  did  not  rise  against  Brutus,  Cassius, 
and  the  rest  and  prevent  it,  is  now  dead,  but  he  has 
left  successors  to  his  historical  notions.  Most  people 
are  just  as  apt  to  think  that  everybody  at  Jerusalem 
knew  King  David  as  certainly  as  the  Skibbareen 
Irishman  that  every  American  wThom  he  meets  in 
Ireland  must  be  acquainted  with  his  cousin  whose 
going  off  from  Skibbareen  was  so  well  understood 
there.  Louis  Napoleon,  in  his  Life  of  Caesar,  may 
magnify  the  importance  and  influence  over  his  times 
of  his  self-reflecting  hero ;  but  we  all  know  that,  in 
fact,  as  soon  as  the  large  imperial  microscope  is  taken 
off  from  the  single  spot,  Caesar  goes  back  again  into  a 
speck  on  the  broad  Eoman  sheet.  To  the  ninety- 


THE   COLONIES.  165 

nine  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  Eomans 
in  one  hundred  thousand,  it  was  practically  of  less 
consequence  whether  Csesar,  Antony,  or  Julius  Scipio 
Smith  ruled  Eome,  than  whether  the  season  was  wet 
or  dry,  or  whether  their  wives  and  children  kept  well 
and  healthy.  To  the  few  around  the  court,  to  the 
mammas  with  eligible  daughters  just  in  the  city  of 
Eome,  to  a  few  vestimentary  Jenkins  who  retailed  to 
the  dozen  families  of  their  set  the  latest  scandals  on 
the  Palatine,  it  was  a  matter  of  some  moment ;  to  the 
farmers,  mechanics,  working-people  paving  the  wide 
empire  with  their  labor  and  patient,  endless  industries, 
of  comparatively  little  consequence  whatever.  Doubt- 
less great  numbers  of  these  hard-working  Eomans,  in 
those  unfortunate  towns  where  there  were  no  presses 
or  'telegraphs,  lived  forty,  fifty,  or  sixty  years  after 
"  great  Csesar  had  turned  to  clay,"  without  suspecting 
that  he  was  not  decorated  china  still  at  Eome  ;  with- 
out dreaming  that,  while  they  themselves  had  been 
raising  pulse  and  sour  wine  for  their  own  little  house 
sovereigns  in  Gaul  or  Germania,  Augustus  had  suc- 
ceeded to  Caesar's  power  at  the  capitol,  and  had  set 
those  scribblers,  Virgil,  Livy,  and  Horace,  to  writing, 
and  had  made  much  history  for  Bohemians  since. 
Little  did  they  know  that  Tiberius  had  meanwhile 
succeeded  Augustus  and  crucified  more  men  at  that 
Eoman  New  York  than  he  had  hairs  on  his  hard 
pafcSy-and  so  kept  on  the  imperial  pastime  with  a  keen 
appetite,  until  he  was  served  with  the  same  sauce  that 
he  had  dished  out  so  freely ;  nor  had  they  ever  heard 
tell  that  during  the  same  interval,  so  uneventful  for 
them  in  their  far-off  silent  occupations,  Caligula  had 


166     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

crawled  up  to  the  place  vacated  by  Tiberius,  and  from 
its  slimy  top  had  pitched  victims  to  wild  beasts  and 
voracious  fish,  and  amused  the  bloody  pauses  in  his 
grim,  rnad  humors  by  feeding  his  favorite  horse  with 
gilded  oats,  and  would  have  made  him  consul  had  not 
the  least  inhuman  brute  died  before  his  quadripedal 
instalment  into  the  office  which  Cicero  sought  so 
long  and  praised  so  loudly. 

The  great  events,  especially  if  at  a  distance,  fill  large 
spaces  in  our  histories ;  but,  like  a  marriage  or  death 
in  the  family,  they  occupy  but  a  comparatively  brief 
part  of  the  life  of  any  of  its  members.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  water,  even  in  rivers  that  are  famous  for 
large  fish,  that  holds  no  fish  at  all,  —  waters  whose 
onflow  gladdens  and  refreshes  large  districts.  A 
nation  or  a  community  must  at  some  time  have 
marked  events  to  stir  its  blood  and  create  noble 
memories ;  but  it  cannot  live  on  Fourth  of  July  or 
the  remembrance  of  "Waterloo.  The  life  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  colonists  passed,  as  that  of 
most  people  in  all  times  and  countries  is  spent,  in 
quiet,  steady  work  during  the  day,  eating  three  meals 
if  they  had  them,  and  two  if  they  had  not,  and  in 
sleeping  as  well  nights  as  the  hot  or  cold  weather, 
wives  or  children,  or  other  disturbers  of  the  peace,  r 
would  permit.  AVe  read  of  some  red-letter  event,  like 
Kidd's  piracies  in  1696— 1698,  that  tossed  from  the  deck 
possibly  twenty  people ;  and  fancy  that  this  Semmes 
must  have  borne  an  important  part  in  those  closing 
years  of  the  century,  without  reflecting  that  almost 
eveiy  week  in  the  year  records  more  victims  on  our 
rivers  and  railroads,  —  victims  despatched  by  us  be- 


THE   COLONIES.  167 

tween  the  mouthfuls  of  our  toast  at  breakfast.  Such 
events  bear  the  same  relation  to  the  volume  of  life  as 
the  capital  letters,  which  head  the  chapters  of  a  book, 
to  its  solid  contents.  They  are  the  daubs  of  paint  on 
the  card  of  gingerbread ;  the  small  pinholes  pricked 
in  the  large  family  loaf.  We  eat  one  thousand  and 
ninety-four  meals  in  the  year  without  any  recollec- 
tion of  them;  we  remember  only  the  one  Thanks- 
giving dinner  which  did  us  no  more  good  than  the 
others,  and  which  probably,  like  Kidd's  piracies,  stuck 
in  our  crops  very  distressingly.  No  doubt  many  of 
the  colonists  never  heard  of  Eobert  Kidd ;  and  others, 
who  had  listened  to  Mary  Jane  singing  the  song 
which  told  "  how  he  sailed,"  fancied  that,  like  Blue- 
beard, he  was  only  invented  for  songs  and  red-covered 
primers.  In  fine,  these  notable  events  are,  in  general, 
but  the  froth-bubbles  on  the  river's  surface.  The 
solid  on-pressing  mass  does  not  feel  the  puffy  little 
globes,  iridescent  though  they  be,  and  swells  though 
they  may  appear  to  the  few  fish  just  around  them. 
There  was  only  one  Kidd  on  the  wide  seas.  Of  the 
many  other  craft,  carefully  managed,  sailing  slowly 
and  wearily,  earning  patient  wages,  and  making  port 
at  the  same  time,  we  hear  nothing. 

So  the  race  drifts,  scuds,  tacks,  works,  or  runs  to- 
wards the  great  harbor.  So  was  it  in  the  seventeenth 
centuiy.  Old  people,  as  now,  took  to  tea,  dozy  arm- 
chairs, tedious  gossip,  and  mumbling  recollections  of 
the  golden  days  of  youth,  —  golden  even  if  actually 
passed  amid  steel  points,  arrow-heads,  or  among  the 
nide  ploughshares  of  ever-recurring,  never-ending  toil. 
Grief  and  gladness  pendulated  with  regular  swings 


168    THE  COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

and  carried  the  liour-hands  of  family  life  evenly  and 
surely  on  through  the  uneventful  spaces,  until  at  last 
the  solemn  bell  struck.  Then  a  new  mound  was 
sodded  under  the  willow-trees  in  the  rude  churchyard, 
whose  slate-stones  notched  the  advance  of  the  Colonies. 
Among  the  young  people  love  crept  in,  too,  under 
shaggy  vests  and  calico  bodices.  Soft  words  passed 
into  earnest  vows,  and  clergymen  or  country  squires 
welded  the  glowing  pieces  into  instruments  of  un- 
complaining labor  and  life-long  use.  Then  came  new 
voices  into  the  house,  and,  —  well,  at  the  winding-up 
of  the  century  there  were  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
five  thousand  people  in  the  settlements.  There  would 
have  been  more,  but  —  Chicago  had  not  yet  started. 

And  now,  tying  our  coltish  Colonies  to  the  bars  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  we  leave  them  for  a  short 
time  while  we  run  down  a  few  stray  subjects,  skit- 
tishly grazing  in  the  back  pastures.  We  shall  soon 
return  to  drive  them  all  into  the  ranker  grass  of  the 
opening  plantations. 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

WITCHCRAFT. 

The  Witch-Caldron  at  Salem.  —  How  its  Bubbling  raised  Teapot  Lids 
and  has  kept  open  other  Lids  ever  since.  —  The  Young  Female  Witches 
at  Salem  condemned  to  the  Ties  of  Matrimony;  the  Old  Ones  to 
harder  Knots.  —  The  Sin  of  being  Old  considered.  —  The  Scarlet 
Letter.  —  Examples  of  Witchcraft  cited.  —  The  Delusion  of  Adam  and 
Eve  at  the  first  Pomological  Convention  in  Eden.  —  Woman  as  Man's 
Familiar  Spirit;  and  her  Conjuries.  —  Cases  of  David,  Samson,  and 
Herod.  —  Antony  dissolved  in  that  Egyptian  Drink,  Pearl  Water.  — 
*  The  Maid  of  Orleans  and  what  an  Arc  she  subtended.  —  The  Philters 
of  Love,  Ambition,  Heroism,  etc.,  administered  to  Men  and  Nations.  — 
Their  Effects.  —  Delusions,  like  Measles,  catching.  —  The  Frenzies  of 
Fashion  fully  described.  —  The  Stock  Exchange.  —  Private  Witch- 
crafts at  Quiltings.  Apple-Parings,  etc.  —  Eed  Corn  and  other  Red 
Ears.  —  Sweet  Witches.  —  A  Jury  of  Gushing  Girls.  —  Punishment  of 
Men  incapable  of  being  bewitched. 

JUST  as  the  last  sands  were  dropping  at  once  out  of 
the  hour-glasses  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  of 
a  few  old  women  at  Salem,  a  strange  trouble  bubbled 
up  in  that  little  teapot  of  a  place,  which  not  only 
raised  its  lid  at  the  time,  but  has  kept  a  great  many 
wide-open  eyes  fixed  on  it  ever  since,  to  see  how  it 
happened,  and  whether  it  would  not,  perhaps,  do  it 
again.  Do  it  again !  of  course  not ;  and  very  sorry 
that  it  ever  did  it  at  all.  Let  us  distill  from  it  first- 
proof  historical  stimulation,  while  we  wait  for  the  colts 
to  cool  off. 

Young  women  had  often  at  Salem,  as  elsewhere, 


170     THE   COMIC   HISTORY    OF    THE   UNITED   STATES. 

troubled  men,  and  for  the  misdemeanor  had  been  con- 
demned to  the  stocks  —  of  marriage.  But  what  to 
do  with  the  ill-favored,  old  ladies  who,  in  1692,  were 
accused  of  breaking  the  rest  of  both  old  and  young, 
—  of  disturbing  two  organs,  the  spleen  and  gall,  lying 
near  that  excitable  old  offender,  the  heart,  and  of 
stopping  judicial  digestion,  —  puzzled  the  brain  of  the 
wisest,  yea,  even  the  solid,  well-set  cerebrum  of  Cot- 
ton Mather.  Much  pondering  was  there,  much  ex- 
orcising, much  studying  of  the  twenty-eighth  chapter 
of  1  Samuel,  and  diligent  rummaging  of  chronicles, 
Jewish,  Egyptian,  French,  and  English,  to  find  de- 
scriptions of  the  vice,  and  the  punishments  therefor. 
The  sin  of  being  old  is,  in  a  new  country  where  young 
activities  are  alone  valuable,  always  great.  At  quaint, 
gable-ended  Salem  it  became  a  swinging  crime. 

H<^v  the  knot  was  eventually  not  cut,  but  tied, 
all  the  world  knows.  Everybody  remembers  how 
those  aged  agitators  were  taken  around  the  neck,  not 
by  future  spouses,  as  the  young  Salemites  were,  but 
by  cords  most  unsilken.  The  delusion  of  course  soon 
vanished  with  the  twenty  victims ;  but  the  Scarlet 
Letter,  written  at  the  time,  which  tells  the  affecting 
story,  is  still  handed  around  unsealed,  and  will  ever 
be  read  with  witching  interest. 

'T  is  the  old  tale,  with  new  characters  and  scenery  to 
adapt  it  to  the  time  and  place.  The  Bible  opens  Avith 
it.  In  that  earliest  recorded  pomological  convention, 
attended  by  only  three  delegates,  Adam,  Eve,  and  Satan, 
the  deception  by  one  of  them  —  a  model  trickster; 
whose  plan  has  since  been  often  followed  in  other  con- 
ventions —  of  the  female  delegate,  who  then  brought 


WITCHCRAFT. 


171 


172     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED  STATES. 

over  the  third,  led  to  a  very  wicked  delusion,  which  has 
got  a  great  many  people  in  a  very  sad  scrape.  If  woman 
was  a  witch  in  Paradise,  what  has  she  not  been  out  ? 
She  has  been  "  man's  familiar  spirit "  ever  since, 
conjuring  up  visions  before  the  eyes  of  young  men, 
as  stately  as  the  sheeted  form  at  Endor,  or  as  pleasing 
as  the  walking  figure  of  Bathsheba  to  the  enamored 
eye  of  the  Chief  Singer.  Samson  could  pull  down 
the  pillars  of  Gaza,  but  could  not  muster  strength 
enough  to  open  his  eyes  to  Delilah's  illusions,  or  to 
raise  his  shorn  head  from  her  delightful  pillow.  Then 
there  was  that  very  fast  woman,  Herodias,  who  got 
a-head  of  John  the  Baptist  on  a  charger.  How  she 
bewitched  Herod  by  a  pair  of  nimble  heels  !  —  a  feat 
by  which  so  many  dancers  have  whirled  reason  from 
her  throne,  and  men  from  theirs. 

What  a  splendid  necromancer  was  Cleopatra,  dis- 
solving poor  Antony,  rich  pearls,  and  the  Eoman  Em- 
pire in  the  drugged  cup  of  her  beauty.  We  see  the 
Duumvir  now  in  that  Alexandrian  palace,  under  her 
wildering  magic.  The  air  without  twinkles  with  the 
clash  of  impatient  Eoman  shields,  and  the  earnest 
gleamings  of  battle-axes,  hungry  to  hew  for  him  a  way 
through  living  Eomans  up  to  the  Capitoline  hill ;  but 
he,  at  the  feet  of  the  sorceress,  swearing  oaths  falser 
than  Abigail  Williams's,  in  Salem  court-house,  tosses  /• 
away  from  him  the  round  globe  of  empire  as  carelessly 
as  the  ragged  Egyptian  harlequin  in  the  next  square 
flings  up  his  cup  and  balls  for  the  passing  amusement 
of  the  idle  crowd. 

Then,  too,  the  Maid  of  Orleans,  who  subtends  such 
a  brilliant  Arc  in  the  annals  of  France ;  —  but  why 


WITCHCRAFT.  173 

iterate  history,  which  is  but  a  biographical  dictionary 
of  characters  who,  by  the  impact  of  enthusiasms, 
genius,  delusive  heroism,  or  passion-working  frenzies, 
have  given  to  others,  individuals,  communities,  armies, 
or  nations,  philters  of  delirious  patriotism,  love-potions, 
noble  discontents  under  real  or  fancied  wrongs,  which 
have  whirled  them  on  to  glory,  to  sudden  graves,  to 
state  coronations,  or  have  lifted  them  up  to  Calvaries 
of  glorious  self-sacrifices  higher  than  themselves,  and 
loftier  than  the  ages  which  have  grown  upwards  as 
they  gazed  ? 

Delusions,  whether  in  Salem,  Chicago,  New  York,  or 
any  other  place  afflicted  with  common  councils  and 
their  accompanying  symptoms,  municipal  debts,  are 
as  catching  as  measles,  and  lead  often  to  eruptions  just 
as  disagreeable.  The  semiannual  frenzies  which,  year 
after  year,  seize  whole  communities,  men,  women,  and 
children,  persons  tall  or  short,  fat  or  lean,  blond  or 
brunette,  making  them  rush  simultaneously  and  with 
hot  celerity  to  throw  away  or  alter  their  last  six 
months'  garments,  bonnets,  hats,  or  foot-clothings,  be- 
cause Madame  Folie  in  Good-for-nothing  Street,  Paris, 
thinks  it  for  her  interest  that  they  should,  and  to 
betake  themselves  all  to  other  garments,  bonnets,  hats, 
and  foot-clothing  of  another  cut  and  color,  —  cuts  and 
colors  uniform  for  all  ages,  sizes,  and  complexions,  — 
are  quite  as  unaccountable  to  people  at  a  distance,  and 
even  to  themselves  a  year  after,  as  the  Salem  delusion 
now,  when  we  take  it  up  in  our  long  historic  fingers, 
and  measure  it  by  the  rule  of  good,  cool,  common 
sense.  The  panics  of  the  stock  exchange,  starting  out 
of  a  rumor  in  some  obscure  corner,  and  swelling  into 


174     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

tense  statements  and  positive  beliefs,  which  grasp  even 
cool  business  brains  and  well-filled  purses,  and  shake 
both  empty  on  the  winds,  find  their  strange  echoes 
back  from  the  study  of  wise  but  momentarily  deluded 
Cotton  Mathers  and  the  disordered  judgment-seats  of 
Salem  magistrates. 

But  the  public  and  published  examples  of  witch- 
craft are  few  compared  with  countless  cases  always 
going  on  in  every  community,  urban  or  rural,  unrecog- 
nized by  any  tribunals  judicial  or  historic.  At  every 
apple-paring  in  New  England,  —  in  the  husking-parties 
throughout  the  West,  where  the  finding  of  the  red  ear 
of  corn  suddenly  makes  every  kissful  girl  the  personal 
owner  of  two  redder  ears,  —  in  the  quilting  frolics  at 
the  South,  where  the  young  gentlemen  of  the  place 
come  in,  after  the  sewing  is  done,  and  sow  roses  on 
cheeks  white  before,  —  by  story-telling  brooks  that 
keep  sacred  the  secrets  of  lovers,  while  babbling  their 
own,  —  along  the  roadside,  in  quiet  nooks,  in  village 
parlors,  in  crowded  cities  where  mammon  tries  in  vain 
to  cheat  the  sweet  witches  out  of  their  devotees, — 
everywhere,  in  fine,  where  hearts  are  not  utterly 
trade-mailed,  office-clad,  or  ossified,  the  tender  deli- 
rium which  early  entered  our  great,  glorious  mad- 
house of  a  world,  produces  effects  which  are  never 
understood  by  some,  which  confound  the  wise  un- 
wisdom of  old  judicial  heads,  and  sometimes  get  in- 
wrought into  fine  tragedies,  before  which  even  those 
of  New  England,  although  told  by  a  good  fellow  or 
transfigured  by  a  Longfellow,  pale  away  faded  and 
colorless. 

The  man  who  is  incapable  of  being  bewitched  by 


WITCHCRAFT.  175 

somebody  or  something,  may  make  a  good  bargain, 
and  live  on  unlovingly  a  long  time,  —  like  an  air- 
plant,  never  touching  his  mother  earth,  or  feeling  its 
inspiriting  magics;  but  he  will  never  get  much  out 
of  life  except  meat,  drink,  and  cold-sheeted  sleeps, 
nor  add  much  to  the  happiness  or  greatness  of  his 
kind.  He  who  lives  in  the  United  States  beyond  a 
fair  age,  without  getting  inextricably  tangled  in  the 
witching  meshes  of  some  good  mate,  should  be  tried 
by  a  jury  of  gushing  girls,  and  condemned  for  life  to 
the  pillow-ry  with  some  of  the  modern  witches  of 
New  England  or  the  sorceresses  of  the  South. 

Whosoever,  then,  accuses  the  witchcrafts  of  other 
times  and  ages,  let  him,  ere  he  casts  the  first  stone, 
look  into  his  own  heart,  or  around  among  his  own 
household,  or  community,  and,  borrowing  a  charity 
from  his  thoughts,  say,  if  he  can,  "  Go  in  —  pieces." 


176      THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED  STATES. 


CHAPTER  X. 

OF  THE  MANNERS,  MORALS,  HABITS,  AND  LAWS  OF  THE 
COLONISTS  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

First-class  Telescope  to  see  the  MANNERS  of  a  Past  Age.  —  Difficulties 
of  Near-sighted  and  Long-sighted  People.  —  Near  Objects  more  embar- 
rassing to  the  Observer  than  Distant. — Why?  —  The  Ghosts  of  the 
past.  —  The  Manners  and  Dress  of  Stuyvesant,  Eliot,  Calvert,  Rolfe, 
etc.  described.  —  Manners  of  the  Mass  detailed;  in  their  Work,  Play, 
Diet,  Courtship,  Fashions,  Treatment  of  Young  Ladies  and  Gentlemen, 
Children,  Servants,  etc.  —  Superior  Advantages  of  Paterfamilias  then 
in  making  Acquaintance  with  his  Wife  and  Children.  —  Fast  Girls 
and  Calicoes.  —  The  Isothermal  Lines  of  ETHICS.  —  Certain  Vices, 
like  Eggs,  laid  secretly  and  hatched  afterwards. —  The  Fashions  of 
Crime  at  various  Epochs  compared. — Jails  and  Jail-Birds.  —  The 
ingenious  'Crimes  of  Trade,  Corporations,  Schools,  and  Seminaries 
noted.  —  How  Sects  are  frozen  or  thawed  by  Temperature.  —  Northern 
and  Southern  Sectarianisms. — Why  Episcopacy  flourished  in  Warm 
Latitudes.  —  The  Early  Commercial  Morality  of  New  York.  —  Baptists, 
Congregntionaltets,  and  Independents.  —  The  HABITS  of  the  Century; 
their  Material,  Color,  Durability,  and  Wear.  —  The  LAWS  mainly  im- 
ported.—  What  a  Business  the  Colonists  carried  on,  notwithstanding, 
in  the  Domestic  Article. — Kindness  of  the  Proprietors  in  furnishing 
Ready-made  Office-holders  not  appreciated.  —  American  Itch  for  Law- 
making.  —  Laws  against  Criminals.  —  Their  .Crimson  Color.  —  How 
the  Rains  of  Mercy  fell  on  hard  Enactments,  and  the  Thaw  which 
followed.  —  Coroners'  Inquests  sat  upon.  —  Verdicts  under  various 
Lights. — Justices  of  the  Peace,  and  the  Law  they  peddled. — Ad- 
ministrations of  Law  then  and  now  contrasted.  —  How  Colors,  although 
imponderable,  turned  the  Judicial  Scales. 

FIRSTLY,   MANNEES.  —  Historians,   especially  in 
modern  times,  are  accustomed  to  entertain  their 
readers  with  varied  and  variegated  descriptions  of  the 

S  * 


178     THE   COMIC   HISTORY    OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

manners  of  the  people,  period,  or  century  under  their 
telescopes  ;  and  as  we  have  a  first-rate  historical  Dol- 
lond,  adjusted  for  day  and  night  observations,  and  can 
bring  down  a  past  age  so  near  as  to  enable  our  readers 
to  see  not  only  the  cut  of  their  great-great-great-grand- 
father's  coats,  the  quality  of  their  metal  buttons  on  the 
outside,  and  of  the  metal  within  their  pockets,  but  can 
note  and  enjoy  even  the  shape  of  their  mouths,  the 
character  of  the  good  things  going  in,  and  the  better 
things  coming  out  of  them ;  nay,  can  catch  and  fix 
the  evanescent  and  subtle  flavor  of  their  humor  and 
wit,  as  they  exhale  in  rosy  nimbi,  we  shall  not  with- 
hold some  of  the  latest  and  most  valuable  discoveries 
we  have  been  thus  enabled  to  make.  Some  near- 
sighted people  find  a  difficulty,  as  they  look  about 
upon  their  contemporaries,  in  arriving  at  results  which 
they  can  crystallize  around  class  nodules.  They  see 
only  individual  specimens,  and  wonder  how  the  photo- 
graphic historian  can  bring  out  by  his  machine  pictu- 
resque groups,  clothed  in  appropriate  costume,  artisti- 
cally arranged.  But  this  difficulty  arises  from  the 
unhappy  fact  that  the  objects  observed  He  directly 
under  their  eye.  The  others  lie  without.  Besides 
such  obtuse-eyed  watchers  of  their  own  times,  who 
experience  an  embarrassment  in  getting  fitting  words 
to  express  their  ideas  of  an  average  man,  age,  habits, 
or  morals, — a  process  much  like  that  of  producing  our 
current  Sherry  wines  by  boiling  down  and  simmering 
off  a  variety  of  ingredients,  —  lose  sight  of  the  precipi- 
tating, coagulating,  forming  mass,  in  their  anxiety  to 
note  the  frisky  bubbles  that  come  up  to  the  agitated 
surface.  Besides,  long-sighted  chroniclers  can  see  and 


THE  MANNERS,   ETC.,   OF  THE   COLONISTS.          179 

describe  the  habits  and  manners  of  the  distant  past 
with  more  clearness,  and  certainly  with  more  telling 
effect,  than  the  troublesome  present,  with  its  distress- 
ing individualities  and  exceptions,  lying,  amid  the 
disturbing  cross-lights  of  actual,  hard,  well-known 
facts.  If,  in  bringing  up  the  ghost  of  a  period  long 
buried,  we  get  the  wrong  dress  on  it,  or  chance  to 
summon  back  a  spectre,  invested  with  habits  that 
fitted  another  epoch  as  well  or  better,  we  are  not  teased 
or  contradicted  by  any  foolish  survivor,  pushed  by 
children-like  questions,  or  worried  into  redness  of  face 
by  puzzling  inquiries  or  an  awkward  silence. 

And  so  reasoning,  we  feel  sure  that,  if  our  inspec- 
tion of  the  accoutrements,  manoeuvres,  and  drill  of  the 
companies  that  march  before  us  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  is  not  absolutely  accurate,  the  fault  will  not 
lie  in  the  distance,  nor  in  the  atmosphere,  nor  yet  in 
the  instrument,  but  in  one  of  these  two  causes,  either 
that  they  have  sent  up  the  wrong  squads  or  else  that 
the  originals  had  not,  after  all,  much  manners  to  be 
inspected. 

It  is  generally  believed  that  Lord  Chesterfield  in- 
vented manners :  but  as  he  was  not  born  until  1694, 
just  as  the  seventeenth  century  was  getting  stagger- 
ingly infirm  and  indifferent  to  its  externals,  and  as  he 
did  not  procure  the  publication  of  his  Letters  until 
the  characters  on  the  blue  slate-stones  over  the  bones 
of  the  deceased  age  had  become  blurred  and  weather- 
dimmed,  the  question  of  the  comparison  of  their 
manners  with  his  patent  methods  and  rules  did  not, 
we  may  well  believe,  much  vex  those  earnest  old  toil- 
ers of  the  sea  and  on  the  land. 


180     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

Single  figures  stand  out  in  sharp  and  pleasing  pic- 
turesqueness  against  the  distant  horizon  of  those  Colo- 
nial days ;  in  Virginia,  John  Eolfe  ;  in  New  York, 
Petrus  Stuyvesant;  in  Massachusetts,  John  Eliot; 
George  Calvert,  in  Maryland ;  Theophilus  Eaton,  in 
Connecticut;  Sir  John  Yeomans,  in  North  Carolina; 
Roger  Williams,  in  Ehode  Island ;  and  many  others, 
who  seem  an  their  granite  integrity  to  be  poised,  like 
calm  sculpture,  in  ruff  and  wrist-frill,  broad-lapelled 
coats,  short-clothes,  silk  stockings,  and  real,  unplated 
silver  knee  and  sleeve  buckles.  —  These  figures,  tall 
and  stately,  with  high-bred,  courtly  manners,  bland 
faces  lit  up  by  purposes  and  convictions,  with  large, 
generous  waistcoats,  made  capacious  for  the  pendula- 
tions  of  their  big,  loving  hearts  beneath,  still  arrest 
our  admiring  eyes.  The  great  mass  of  the  Colonists, 
however,  were  resolute  workers,  living  on  a  spare  diet, 
sleeping  on  hard  beds,  with  shake-downs  for  their 
friendly,  and  shake-ups  for  their  unfriendly,  guests. 
Their  tastes  were  simple  and  confined  to  a  few  objects. 
Those  modern  houses  in  which  we  dwell,  more  ap- 
propriately called  museums,  the  best  parts  kept  for 
show,  and  having  not  one,  but  several  mermaids,  a 
What-is-it,  and  an  assortment  of  woolly  animals  with 
tails  for  heads,  and  heads  omitted,  would  have 
paralyzed  and  shocked  the  most  advanced  Colonists. 
Their  manners  were  taking,  but  they  were  mainly 
exhibited  in  taking  grain  from  the  fields,  fish  from 
the  sea,  and  scant  returns  from  their  store  sales.  The 
graces  were  shown  mainly  by  husbands  in  lifting  their 
spouses  on  and  off  pillions,  to  and  from  church,  and 
by  young  men  in  those  sweetly  rough  compliments 


THE  MANNERS,   ETC.,   OF   THE   COLONISTS.  181 

that  love  contrives  in  all  times,  and  among  all  classes, 
to  shape  out  from  a  scanty,  lingual  stock  in  exchange 
for  sheep's-eyes  and  assenting  blushes. 

As  it  took  vessels  at  that  period  several  months  to 
come  from  France,  the  settlers  were  somewhat  late  in 
their  knowledge  of  the  foreign  modes;  but  as  the 
styles  were  the  latest  known,  it  was  all  the  same  in 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  Charleston,  and  Boston. 
That  rotatory  machine  which  now  turns  out  fashions 
semiannually,  now  clipping  a  yard  or  so  from  the  top 
of  a  dress  and  adding  it  to  the  bottom,  here  expanding 
a  bonnet  to  the  size  of  a  parasol,  then  contracting  it 
to  dimensions  less  than  the  milliner's  bill  for  it;  at 
one  time  running  a  flat  iron  down  in  front,  and  at 
another  tacking  a  donkey's  load  on  behind,  had  not  yet 
been  invented.  Paterfamilias  recognized  his  own 
children,  day  after  day,  and  even  year  after  year,  in 
the  same  modes  and  garments ;  the  serviceable  gray 
or  serge,  during  week-days,  and  the  decent,  plain, 
unarresting,  and  unstunning  habiliments,  reverently 
donned  for  Sunday.  The  girls  were  not  fast,  although 
the  colors  of  their  calicoes  were.  Their  bright  carna- 
tions they  wore  all  the  time,  only  a  little  more  so  on 
Sunday  evenings  when  the  sparks  lit  them  up,  espe- 
cially if  a  match  was  near. 

In  general  a  homespun  candor  quaintly  marked 
family  and  neighborhood  intercourse,  and  homespun 
honesty,  integrity,  and  good  sense,  public  and  private 
actions.  Of  course  all  ages  have  common  types  of 
roguery.  Each,  too,  has  its  own  special  representa- 
tives who  commit  crimes  according  to  a  prevailing 
mode,  and  who  might  easily  be  put  into  the  fashion- 


182    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

plates  of  the  Old  Bailey  or  Sing-Sing.  In  these  re- 
spects the  times  whereof  we  speak  kept  company,  to 
some  extent,  with  their  predecessors.  But  among  the 
sparse  settlements,  the  appropriators  and  spoilers  of 
others'  property  and  rights  had  such  a  hard  time  to  do 
a  thriving  business,  and  found  that  honest  work  laid 
up  so  much  more  at  the  year's  end,  that  after  a  little 
while  they  learned  to  prefer  the  ways  of  the  virtuous, 
not  from  principle,  but  from  interest,  and  left  off 
courses  that  led  to  the  poor-house,  if  they  missed  the 
jail. 

There  were  here  and  there  dandies  who  imported 
their  manners  with  their  clothes ;  but  as  the  girls  then 
had  the  good  sense  to  believe  that  these,  so  far  from 
being  superior  to  those  of  domestic  growth,  did  not  wear 
so  long  or  well,  and  had  a  way  of  changing  so  often 
as  to  be  worth  less  than  the  duty  imposed  to  bring 
them  in,  such  foreign  importations  gradually  fell  off. 

Young  ladies  at  home  then  sewed  the  tares,  in- 
stead of  the  wicked  old  Sower.  The  "  help  "  was  only 
looked  for,  and  always  found  in,  the  house ;  which 
was  kept  up  for  the  sake  of  the  family,  and  not  for 
the  servants.  People  worked  all  the  hours  in  which 
they  did  not  sleep,  and  thus  kept  their  minds  from 
being  agitated  by  the  operation  of  "  eight-hour  laws," 
the  tortures  of  party  squeezes,  and  the  bore  of  con- 
certs and  lectures.  Children  were  put  to  bed  before 
midnight,  were  satisfied  with  their  simple  toys,  and 
remained  children  nature's  full  term.  Parents  ruled, 
and  not  the  baby,  which  crowed  as  much  as  it  pleased, 
except  over  its  begettors. 

It  must  be  said,  however,  that  elderly  people  even 


THE  MANNERS,  ETC.,  OF  THE   COLONISTS.  183 

then  bewailed  the  decay  of  the  times,  and  often,  over 
their  pipes  or  knitting,  conjured  up  visions  of  more 
virtuous  days,  when  they  were  young,  amid  the  green 
fields  of  old  England,  the  emerald  meadows  of  Hol- 
land, or  on  the  hardy  plains  of  Sweden. 

Secondly,  MORALS.  —  Ethics  have'  no  isothermal 
lines,  fencing  in  the  moral  qualities,  as  nature  gir- 
dles the  earth  with  wavy  zones  for  fruits,  arctic, 
temperate,  and  tropical.  And  yet  certain  vices  and 
virtues  prevail,  as  trade-winds,  more  at  one  period, 
or  over  one  tract  at  a  given  time  than  at  or  over 
another.  It  would  almost  seem  as  if  certain  moral 
or  immoral  ovarian  eggs  had  been  early  and  secretly 
laid  in  some  wide  districts,  or  among  certain  nations, 
where  they  were  afterwards  washed  over  by  the  im- 
pregnating milt  of  peculiar  influences,  and  then  broke 
into  ready  and  abundant  life. 

There. were  jails  in  all  the  Colonies,  and  very  early. 
The  variety  of  the  jail-bird  never  wanted  specimens. 
The  crimes  against  the  person  were  more  frequent  at 
first  than  those  against  property,  for  the  obvious 
reason  that  there  were  more  of  the  former  than  the 
latter;  as  property  multiplied,  however,  it  was,  as 
usual,  viciously  coveted. 

The  vices  of  an  early  age  are  more  vigorous  but 
rarer.  Mean  crimes ;  ambidextrous,  cunning  contri- 
vances under  the  forms  but  against  the  spirit  of  law ; 
ingenious  larcenies  by  railway  companies,  by  chartered 
corporations,  by  trust  companies,  by  commercial  part- 
nerships, by  seminaries  and  academies,  where  the 
pupils  provide  their  own  furniture,  silver,  and  a  great 


184    THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED  STATES. 

part  of  the  instruction,  and  pay  twice  —  ordinary  and 
extraordinary  —  for  everything  they  ought  to  get  and 
do  not ;  sharp,  unscrupulous  trade,  slicing  down  reali- 
ties so  thin  that  they  hardly  serve  to  veneer  our 
wants,  and  diluting  truth  so  much  that  the  millionth 
part  of  a  grain  will  supply  a  whole  store  for  twenty- 
four  hours  ;  the  'brokerage  of  office ;  the  thousand  de- 
ceits, infiltrated  through  the  spongy  textures  of  doubt- 
ful natures,  and  sprouting  out,  like  rice,  when  the 
water  of  gain  is  poured  upon  it ;  —  these  all  are  the 
luxuries  of  a  higher  civilization.  They  have  nothing 
to  feed  on  in  a  simple  state  of  society.  They  drift  in 
upon  an  older  one  like  barnacles  and  foul  creepers  on 
the  copper  fastenings  of  noble,  well-freighted  ships. 
Like  blood  in  super-refined  sugar,  subtle  vices  look  so 
white  in  the  mixture  that  we  almost  fail  to  see  their 
crimsoning  hues.  We  speak  of  the  crimes  and  mis- 
demeanors of  the  Colonial  times  as  indications  of  the 
prevailing  morality,  just  as  flies  in  open  pans  of  cream 
tell  its  quality  and  richness. 

Morality,  we  have  said,  is  not  bounded  by  isother- 
mal lines  ;  and  yet  climate  and  soil  do  seriously  affect 
the  prevailing  moral  tones  and  hues,  just  as  earthly 
lakes  take  on  the  passing  colors  of  the  heavens  above. 

The  Puritan"  sternness  of  New  England  convictions 

—  as  iron-like  as  the  firs  and  larches  on  her  own  hills 

—  swept  in  as  gray  gustiness  across  her  early  history 
as  her  northeasters  over  her  wide  fields.     The  latter 
pinched  her  children  physically  till  they  became  of  the 
same   blue   tint   as   their    church   regulations.      The 
rigidity  of  even  Huguenot  faith  could  not  stand  the 
continual  sun  of  South  Carolina,  which,  at  length,  so 


THE  MANNERS,  ETC.,  OF  THE   COLONISTS.  185 

relaxed  its  sharp  lines  that  they  ceased  to  cut  at  all 
across  that  compressed  globe  of  iniquity,  human  slav- 
ery. The  moral  qualities  of  Virginia  were  like  its  own 
soil,  at  first  stiff  and  deep,  but  gradually  deteriorating 
until  they  got  down  into  such  a  narcotic,  stony  poverty, 
that  the  plough  of  vigorous  truth  seldom  turned  up. 

Forms  of  church  worship,  rites,  and  ceremonies  usu- 
ally flourish  best  in  warm  latitudes,  where  the  pas- 
sive swing  on  ecclesiastical  ropes,  suspended  between 
time-crusted  pillars,  requires  less  exertion  than  climb- 
ing the  tree,  Zaccheus-like  for  one's  self.  The  vines 
which,  all  along  down  the  well-sunned  slopes,  from 
the  Chesapeake  Bay  southwards,  lean  lovingly  upon 
the  magnolia  and  cottonwood,  shaping  themselves 
often  into  verdant  gothic  arches,  grasped  with  no 
tighter  fingers  the  supports  which  safely  steadied  their 
trusting  confidence,  than  did  their  sunny-hearted  cul- 
tivators curl  securely  the  tendrils  of  their  religious 
faith  around  the  Episcopal  oaks,  whose  acorns,  dropped 
from  rook-nested  boughs  in  England,  and  gathered  and 
planted  here,  soon  sprang  up  and  spread  their  cool 
shades  for  an  easy,  luxurious  faith. 

The  dominant  morality  of  New  York  early  borrowed 
its  ingredients,  as  its  capital,  from  whomsoever  would 
lend  it  anything.  Although  all  these  contributions 
came  to  it  through  the  Narrows,  they  soon  broadened, 
on  being  landed.  Thither  came  the  sturdy,  broad- 
breeched,  meadow-bottomed  Dutch,  bringing  the  well- 
pounded  creed  of  Dort,  hardened  and  tempered,  like 
blistered  steel,  upon  the  anvil  of  war,  through  the  pre- 
ceding century.  The  mace  of  iron-glaived  Alva  had 
again  and  again  struck  it ;  but  the  sturdy  strokes  had 


186     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

sent  more  fire  into  than  they  had  ever  brought  from 
it.  There,  too,  came  Protestants  from  the  Rhine,  who 
had  gone  through  the  flames  of  St.  Bartholomew's  day, 
and  escaping  first  from  France  to  Old  Netherlands, 
and  thence  to  New  Netherlands,  had  carried  with 
them,  more  carefully  than  their  old  delft,  the  sharp 
Articles  of  Calvinism.  From  Bohemia  came  the 
scholars  of  Huss ;  from  Piedmont,  the  hunted  Wal- 
denses ;  from  France,  the  men  who  turned  their  faces 
to  centripetal  Borne  as  their  Mecca,  —  their  religious 
creeds  mixing  and  mingling  in  the  wide-armed  Bay 
of  New  York,  which  ever  welcomed  all  religions  that 
built  houses  on  its  shores  or  belted  its  waist  with  com- 
mercial girdles.  The  Baptists  were  early  washed  over 
to  our  coasts,  and  finding  ample  rivers  for  their  aquatic 
rite,  spread  with  every  new  wave  of  emigration.  Con- 
gregational and  Independent  churches  grew  like  young 
bullocks  in  almost  every  New  England  valley,  —  even 
putting  their  stiff  necks  through  the  Connecticut 
natural  Ox-Bow  at  Hadley,  —  the  only  yoke  they  ever 
would  submit  to.  We  speak  of  churches  and  sects  as 
propagators  of  morality,  and  as  the  yardsticks  which 
measured  the  colonial  morals  ;  for  as  yet  wdcked  men 
had  not  learned  to  use  the  church  as  covers,  whence  to 
spread  nets  for  simpletons  that  lighted,  like  pigeons,  on 
or  near  the  adjacent  grounds.  In  general,  it  may  be 
said,  that  in  spite  of  Puritan  rites  in  New  England  show- 
ing the  forbidding  and  cold  side  of  the  warm-hearted 
Gospel,  in  spite  of  the  hedged  Episcopal  orchards  of 
Virginia,  where  the  blossoming  odors  were  sought  to 
be  kept  wholly  inside  the  very  high  walls,  in  spite 
of  the  fermenting  influences  in  New  York,  and  the 


THE   MANNERS,   ETC.,    OF   THE   COLONISTS.          187 

discouragements  from  various  local  causes  in  the  other 
Colonies,  Ehode  Island  and  Maryland  excepted,  the 
colonists  were  healthily  moral. 

The  schoolmaster  got  early  abroad ;  and,  gener- 
ally boarding  around  in  the  school  district,  and  making 
himself  miscellaneously  useful,  wedged  some  educat- 
ing notions  into  the  heads  of  all,  —  in  the  younger  by 
day,  and  in  the  older  during  the  evenings.  And  thus 
the  church,  the  school-house,  industry,  which  pushed 
back  idleness  and  its  brood  of  vices,  simple  agricul- 
tural ways,  the  absence  of  city  sores,  and  the  rugged, 
conscientious  pursuit  of  wholesome  livelihoods  in 
largely  ventilated  spaces,  all  concurred  to  hand  up  the 
Colonies  along  the  unplanked  roads  of  the  age,  to  the 
outstretched  hand  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Thirdly,  THE  HABITS  of  the  period  were  few  and 
simple ;  generally  made  of  conscientious,  native  mate- 
rials, coarse  but  strong ;  and  were  exceedingly  well 
preserved. 

They  were  of  a  mixed  color,  but  on  the  whole  good. 

Fourthly,  THE  LAWS  were  at  first  and  usually  im- 
ported. Most  of  them  were  designed  and  upholstered 
in  those  second-class  shops  in  London,  the  proprietors' 
manufactories,  which  were  owned  by  certain  royal 
joint-stock  subscribers,  whose  object  was  to  make  as 
much  money  as  possible  out  of  their  articles.  With 
this  supreme  object  in  view,  their  enactments  were 
mainly  framed  to  secure  to  themselves  as  much  as 
could  be  of  the  proceeds  of  colonial  labor,  and  leave 
the  colonial  purchasers  to  pay  their  own  expenses  and 


188    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

run  the  risks  from  the  weather,  poor  crops,  and  Indian 
interruptions.  To  accomplish  this,  the  proprietors 
sought  to  have  the  colonists  devote  as  much  of  their 
time  as  possible  to  work.  They  endeavored  to  relieve 
them  from  the  necessity  of  wasting  precious  moments 
in  disposing  of  their  products  or  in  supplying  them- 
selves with  materials,  or  in  gossiping  in  assemblies 
about  foolish  rights,  or  in  squandering  their  days  in 
electing  officers,  or  gadding  about  the  townships  in 
electioneering  for  themselves  or  others. 

Did  the  Colonies  want  materials,  wheat  to  sow  the 
first  year,  crockery,  furniture,  store  goods  ? 

The  companies  could  so  easily  send  over  a  ship  with 
them. 

Did  the  prosperous  colonist  wish  to  dispose  of  his 
surplus  crop  ? 

The  companies  would  take  it  for  him,  and  sell  it  in 
England. 

Was  a  governor,  a  judge,  an  office-holder  of  any 
kind,  such  as  collector,  portwarden,  etc.,  needed  ? 

Why,  the  companies  kept  them  already  made  at 
their  manufactory  in  London,  and  would  express  one 
through  by  their  fast-sailing  line  in  ample  time,  even 
if  it  took  three  months,  and  would  deliver  them 
wherever  desired,  at  Plymouth,  Hartford,  Charleston, 
or  Jamestown. 

The  colonists  very  early  felt  the  inconvenience  of 
this  little  arrangement ;  and,  being  a  sharp  set,  soon 
perceived  the  loss  in  thus  buying  and  selling  exclu- 
sively in  a  foreign  market,  stuff  which  they  could  suit 
themselves  better  with  at  home,  even  if  the  articles 
did  not  have  the  companies'  trade-mark  or  shine  with 


THE  MANNERS,   ETC.,  OF  THE  COLONISTS.  189 


190    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

their  patented  varnish.  Gradually  they  tried  their 
hands  at  law-making  and  officer-making,  and,  finding 
how  easy  it  was,  took  a  great  liking  to  the  business ; 
and  at  length,  dropping  the  foreign-made  articles  one 
after  another,  came  to  carry  on  a  considerable  manu- 
facture of  their  own.  The  Yankee  colonists  were  par- 
ticularly handy  at  making  church  regulations,  and  so 
multiplied  them  that  we  doubt  whether  any  churches 
then  existing  had  such  a  large  and  full  collection.  In 
fact,  in  some  parts  of  New  England,  church-members 
had  a  difficulty  often  in  knowing  what  to  do,  not  hav- 
ing sufficient  time  to  read  the  long  codes,  and  yet  con- 
scientiously fearing  lest  they  might  offend  against 
some  of  their  minute  provisions  prescribing  or  pro- 
scribing action.  It  may  be  remarked,  in  passing,  that 
this  caccethcs  faciendi  leges  is  an  itch  highly  Ameri- 
can, no  ointment  having  yet  been  found  strong  enough 
to  cure  it.  The  colonists  early  insisted  on  acquiring 
their  lands  in  fee,  not  liking  any  leases  but  releases. 
The  old  fable  of  Anteus  was  again  vivified.  The  man 
who  stands  on  the  soil  gets  the  strength  of  the  earth ; 
and  forthwith  wrestles  down  his  opponents,  want  or 
idleness,  be  they  never  so  herculean.  And  so  the 
simple  land-owners  of  the  Colonies,  touching  con- 
stantly their  own  acres,  sucked  up  law-making  power 
from  their  pores,  and  even  imjjibed  a  certain  resisting' 
faculty  to  canons  bored  by  any  one  but  themselves. 

They  had  an  aversion  to  roads  not  made  with  their 
own  hands  ;  to  laws  of  entail  or  inheritance,  disposing 
of  their  lands  which  they  had  chopped  out  of  the  raw 
side  of  a  continent ;  and,  in  fine,  became  so  resolutely 
resistant  to  all  resolutions  moved  on  the  far  Atlantic 


THE  MANNERS,  ETC.,   OF  THE   COLONISTS.          191 

side,  unless  seconded  on  this  by  themselves  through 
their  own  representatives,  that  we  are  compelled  by 
authentic  documents  to  believe,  if  the  ten  command- 
ments had  been  enacted  by  the  royal  law-makers 
without  Colonial  ratification,  the  sturdy  settlers  would 
have  practically  expunged  all  the  "  nots "  from  the 
suspected  decalogue. 

In  those  early  times  nothing  was  more  criminal  than 
the  laws  against  criminals.  Like  the  medical  practi- 
tioners, the  legal  doctors  believed  in  blood-letting  for  all 
ailments.  Misdemeanors,  now  disposed  of  at  quarter 
sessions  and  by  police  magistrates  with  small  fines  or 
petty  imprisonment,  then  dangled  at  the  hideous  cross- 
bars. 

The  soft,  April-like  rains  of  clemency,  now  and 
then,  however,  began  to  fall  upon  these  hard  enact- 
ments. Quakers  mildly  doubted  whether  these  scare- 
crows really  frightened  other  offenders  off  the  fields  of 
crime.  Silent  tears,  shed  in  secret  household  places 
over  brothers  and  sons  hung  up  on  high  hills  for 
stealing  or  trespass,  began  to  gather,  like  the  waters 
of  fountains  hidden  away  in  the  depths  of  valleys,  and 
to  create  that  large  American  river,  Public  Sentiment, 
— larger  than  the  Hudson,  the  Ohio,  or  the  Mississippi, 
—  which,  rising  and  rising,  has  swept  so  many  abuses 
and  errors  into  the  gulfs  of  time. 

That  solemn  Saxon  joke,  a  coroner's  inquest,  as 
gloomy  in  its  dissections,  and  as  funny  in  its  illogical 
conclusions,  as  in  the  land  of  the  heptarchy,  was  not 
denied  to  those  deodand  colonists  whose  hearts  sud- 
denly stopped  beating,  and  whose  mortal  wrecks, 
thrown  up  on  that  very  weary  shore  "  Crow'uers 


192    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Law"  were  always  prizes  for  small  bunglers.  For 
live  men,  habeas  corpus,  that  great  opener  of  illegally 
locked  doors,  began  at  the  close  of  the  century  to  be 
provided. 

If  colonial  judges  sometimes  wrote  to  England  to 
know  how  to  decide  cases  politically  edged,  for  fear 
they  might  cut  a  royal  prerogative  or  sharpen  popular 
rights ;  or  if  justices  of  the  peace  —  those  small  ped- 
lers  of  veiy  common  law,  and  uncommon  specimens 
of  judicial  wares  —  dribbled  out  decisions  for  plain- 
tiff or  defendant,  not  knowing  which  was  which,  the 
puzzled  magistrate  giving  opinions  about  the  off  ox, 
without  knowing  which  was  the  "  off"  or  which  the 
"  near "  ox  ;  or  if  sometimes  in  extreme  cases  the  ob- 
fuscated and  doubting  arbiter  of  law  consulted  his 
wife  and  retailed  her  caudle  lecture  to  the  astonished 
suitor,  as  his  well-considered  judgment  in  the  case,  — 
in  the  main  it  may  be  averred  that  justice  was  as 
well  tolled  from  the  mills,  as  in  these  latter  days 
when  the  judicial  miller  takes  from  the  bag  before 
the  grist  goes  in,  and  sees  to  it  that  his  private  gutter 
taps  the  hopper  before  it  shakes  itself  into  the  cus- 
tomer's heap.  Color  is  supposed  to  lurk  just  under  the 
outer  skin,  and,  if  placed  on  the  scales,  to  be  impon- 
derable ;  but  it  was  always  found  that  positive  colors, 
when  put  on  the  judicial  Fair  banks,  were  very  light ; 
the  white,  which  is  no  color  at  all,  invariably  weigh- 
ing down  that  side  of  the  balance,  when  a  cinnamon- 
colored  Indian  or  a  black-berried  African  was  found 
in  the  other.  The  black  man  always  lost  at  the 
checker-board,  even  when  the  moves  were  claimed 
to  be  on  the  square.  In  fact,  until  a  few  years  past, 


THE  MANNERS,  ETC.,   OF  THE   COLONISTS.  193 

when  the  military  game  called  "drafts"  "began,  luck 
never  favored  that  color  at  the  little  game  of  law, 
at  which  two  can  play  and  one  pay,  or  in  fact  at  any 
of  the  larger  games  of  life  in  America.  The  bleaching- 
powders  that  whiten  even  the  ermine  were  slow  in 
coming  into  use.  The  seventeenth  century,  like  so 
many  of  its  ancestors,  while  working  its  double  team, 
one  white  and  the  other  black,  to  draw  its  loads,  took 
better  care  at  baiting-places  and  at  the  taverns  over 
night  of  the  white  horse  than  of  the  other. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  COLONIES  IN  THE  LOWER  HALF  t)F  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

The  Colonial  Colts  in  the  large,  open  Field  of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  — 
The  Effects  of  a  Sniff  of  French  Gunpowder.  —  Queen  Anne's  War, 
1702-1713  ;  its  Cost  and  Results  in  Europe  and  America.  —  Acadia 
changes  its  Name  to  Nova  Scotia.  —  How  the  Colonies  started  a  News- 
paper in  1704.  —  Philadelphia  in  a  Sheet  in  1719;  and  how  comfortable 
it  was.  —  The  Franklin  Bros,  furnish  Food  too  condensed  even  for 
Boston.  —  Benjamin  quits  the  Hub  ;  foots  it,  without  tiring,  to  New 
York.  —  How  he  got  through  New  Jersey  without  paying  Toll.  —  Enters 
Philadelphia  with  Two  Loaves,  and  sets  up  an  Intellectual  Bakery. — 
Banks  built  on  the  Sands  of  Credit.  —  Moving  Accidents.  —  John  Law's 
Scheme  to  use  the  Mississippi  Valley ;  how  it  grew  ;  what  it  promised, 
and  how  it  performed.  —  A  French  Pasquinade.  —  The  Results  of  a 
Bank  Panic  fc  the  Eighteenth  Century.  —  The  Effects  on  the  Manufac- 
ture of  Children.  —  Number  of  Colonists  in  1713  and  1743.  —  The  Con- 
dition of  Delaware,  New  Hampshire,  and  Vermont.  —  The  Training  of 
Young  America,  —  Yale  College  and  its  Mustard-like  Growth.  —  The 
American  Learned  Oak. — The  Connection  between  Slate-Pencil  and 
Gum  Chewing  and  Female  Education.  —  What  took  Place  between 
1713  and  1743.  —  A  Negro  Plot  in  New  York.  —  Negroes  thrown  over- 
board, and  the  Bubbles  that  rose.  —  How  large  Historic  Doors  swing 
on  small  Hinges.  —  Examples  from  A  to  W.  —  What  happened  because 
Maria  Theresa  was  a  Female.  —  The  English  Georges ;  what  Bulls  they 
were,  and  made.  —  The  Transatlantic  Bullocks ;  how  they  rushed 
into  King  George's  War  in  1744,  and  what  Mischief  they  did  for  Four 
Years. 

THE  colonial  colts  which  we  left  tied  up  to  the 
bars  of  the  eighteenth  century  could  not,  with 
their  American  blood,  stand  there  for  any  length  of 
time  without  chafing  to  be  let  into  "  fresh  fields  and 


COLONIES,  LOWER  HALF  OF  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.   195 

pastures  new."  The  bars  down,  off  they  scampered, 
dashing  up  their  heels  and  tossing  their  heads  in  the 
fresh  air. 

Scarcely,  however,  had  they  gone  a  stone's  throw  in 
the  great  unfenced  field,  before  they  snuffed  a  sulphu- 
rous smell  from  the  adjacent  lot,  the  French  settle- 
ments of  Acadia.  Queen  Anne,  the  second  daughter 
of  James  II.,  who,  in  1702  had  succeeded  her  sister 
Mary,  which  aforesaid  Mary,  with  her  husband,  the 
Orange  William,  had,  as  we  have  already  seen,  found 
England  too  small  for  them  and  the  aforementioned 
James,  also  took  a  fancy  that  France  was  being  made 
too  comfortable  for  her  migratory  parent,  and,  in  order 
to  keep  him  travelling,  bombarded  that  country.  This 
little  experiment,  called  in  the  large-bore  histories, 
Queen  Anne's  War,  lasted  eleven  years,  and  cost  Eng- 
land about  one  sixteenth  of  her  entire  value.  She 
obtained,  however,  as  compensation  for  this  outlay, 
these  results  in  Europe  :  several  fresh  monuments  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  a  staggering  back-load  of  debt,  a 
crowd  of  one-sleeved  men,  many  young  women  in  be- 
coming widow's  caps,  Marlborough  and  wife  with  sala- 
ries amounting  yearly  to  three  hundred  and  twenty- 
six  thousand  dollars  besides  the  snug  little  box  at 
Blenheim  Palace,  the  glorious  though  empty  victories 
of  Eamillies,  Malplaquet,  Oudenarde,  and  Blenheim, 
and  that  very  big  elephant,  the  rock  of  Gibraltar. 

Of  course  our  colts  became  intensely  excited  by 
the  gunpowdery  air,  tore  away  into  the  northern 
French  lot,  and  fell  to  kicking  most  lustily.  The 
French  fillies  there  naturally  bit  back  and  let  fly  their 
gallic-shod  heels  freely ;  but  the  New  England  ponies 


196    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

so  worried  and  wounded  them  in  the  flanks  and  hips 
as  to  drive  them  clean  out  of  the  field.  Port  Eoyal 
was  reduced  and  became  Ann-apolis ;  and  Acadia, 
battered  by  colonial  guns  to  a  wreck,  and  turning  up 
in  her  distress  under  the  name  of  Nova  Scotia,  grasped 
one  of  those  long  humane  lines  which  the  Marine 
Society,  or  government  located  at  London,  threw  out  at 
that  time  continually  for  distressed  communities.  To 
this  sea  line  the  blue-nosed,  fish-shaped  peninsula  has 
since  held  with  the  bite  of  a  codfish,  trolled  and 
played  by  the  Izaak  Walton  of  nations,  until  the  fish 
shows  signs  of  letting  go  the  hook. 

Amid  the  Alpine  glaciers  of  war,  however,  there 
bloomed,  as  travellers  find  high  up  among  the  ice- 
fields, the  graceful  and  tender  flowers  of  gentler  life. 

The  Colonies  started  the  century  with  a  newspaper. 
The  Boston  "  News-Letter,"  printed  on  a  foolscap  sheet, 
and  issued  once  a  week,  in  1704,  only  twenty-eight 
years  after  the  first  newspaper  was  started,  and  in  the 
very  year  the  first  editor,  Koger  1'Estrange,  died,  was 
the  parent  of  that  large  family  of  children  of  all  sizes 
and  with  such  varied  characters,  which  are  now  dis- 
seminated through  almost  every  village  of  the  land, 
and  has  acquired  such  a  wide  influence,  interest,  and 
large  real  estates  among  us.  Meet  it  was  that  this 
prolific  stock  should  have  originated  on  the  spot  where, 
as  is  now  pretty  well  proved,  the  first  white  men  who 
visited  our  continent  made  their  first  landing  within 
our  borders,  seven  hundred  years  before.  It  must  not, 
however,  be  supposed,  that  the  pioneers  in  newspapers 
were  Danes.  From  all  that  can  now  be  ascertained, 
they  were  Bohemians.  We  may  add  that  the  "  News- 


COLONIES,  LOWER  HALF  OF  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.   197 

Letter  "  was  never  merged  in  the  New  York  "  Herald." 
As  it  never  issued  but  a  single  edition  on  any  one 
day,  and  had  no  contemporaries  at  first  to  cull  from, 
it  did  not  become  the  New  York  "  Express."  It  is 
also  a  common  mistake  to  suppose  that  it  was  after- 
wards expanded  into  the  "North  American  Eeview," 
or  became  by  cultivation  that  large,  flowering  double 
monthly  rose,  "  The  Atlantic."  The  "News-Letter"  of- 
fered no  premiums  to  multiply  subscribers  or  to  divide 
the  claims  of  competitors  ;  for  it  had  no  rival  for  fifteen 
years.  Then  Philadelphia,  always  emulous,  got  up  a  sec- 
ond sheet,  a  warm,  gray  worsted  one,  which  wrapped 
up  comfortably  her  growing  youth,  and  displayed 
most  acceptably  her  comely  proportions.  Two  years 
later,  in  1721,  James  Franklin  established  at  Boston 
"The  New  England  Courant,"  the  fourth  American 
newspaper,  full  of  audacious  thinking  and  indepen- 
dent notions,  some  of  which  were  furnished  by  his 
brother  Benjamin,  then  a  stripling  of  fifteen  years. 
The  criticisms  were  too  strong,  even  for  Boston ;  and 
after  trying  in  vain  for  two  years  to  nurse  the  place 
up  to  the  w7holesome  diet,  Benjamin  left  it.  After  a 
perilous  journey  to  New  York,  whence  he  footed  it 
across  New  Jersey  without  being  policed  or  tolled, 
—  for  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Eailroad  had  not  yet 
subjected  that  Province  to  its  sway,  —  he  entered 
Philadelphia  with  two  loaves  of  bread  for  himself. 
He  soon  set  up  a  good  intellectual  oven  of  his  own, 
and  distributed,  not  Boston  brown  bread,  but  well- 
baked,  healthy,  family  loaves,  made  of  the  best  white 
flour  to  be  had,  to  the  world  and  —  Philadelphia. 
In  1740  there  were  eleven  newspapers  in  America, 


198    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

one  in  each  of  the  Colonies  of  New  York,  Virginia, 
and  South  Carolina,  three  in  Pennsylvania,  and  five 
in  Boston,  which  thus  early  began  to  gather  Massa- 
chusetts to  a  head. 

But  these  were  not  the  only  papers  issued.  The 
Bank  of  England  had  been  established  in  1694 ;  and 
eighteen  years  later,  paper  credits  were  issued  by 
South  Carolina  to  the  amount  of  £48,000.  Massa- 
chusetts with  her  presses  could  of  course  print  more 
promises,  and  in  1714  she  beat  South  Carolina  by 
£  2,000.  Other  Colonies  followed,  even  Ehode  Island, 
distrusting  Providence,  built  a  paper-house  on  the 
sands  of  credit.  The  floods  soon  came  upon  all  these 
unstable  edifices,  and  there  were  many  "  moving  acci- 
dents by  flood"  to  the  washed  banks.  The  slight 
silver  foundations  were  undermined,  and  the  banking- 
houses  fell,  and  "  great  was  the  fall  thereof."  Twenty- 
five  years  after  the  first  bank  was  established,  few  of 
the  credits  were  worth  over  twenty  cents  on  the  prom- 
ised dollar.  Those  of  North  Carolina  descended  to 
seven,  —  almost  as  low  as  Confederate  paper  in  1865. 

But  the  scheme  most  American  in  size  and  prom- 
ises was  started  in  France  by  a  Scotchman  in  1716. 
He  proposed  to  the  French  Eegent  and  established 
upon  the  boundless  trust  in  the  untold,  because  not 
unfolded,  mining  wealth  of  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi, 
a  company,  spawning  200,000  shares  of  stock,  aggre- 
gating at  the  par  value  one  thousand  millions  of  livres, 
which,  on  the  iron  strength  of  human  faith,  six  mil- 
lions only  of  silver  in  its  own  vaults,  and  the  hand- 
some certificates  that  hinted  at  more  figures  than 
ordinary  arithmetic  can  compute,  agreed  to  pay  the 


COLONIES,  LOWER  HALF  OF  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.    199 

vast  public  debt  of  France,  swollen  under  Louis  XIV. 
higher  than  a  Mississippi  freshet,  and  to  distribute 
forty  per  cent  annually  to  the  stockholders.  Omne 
ignotum  pro  maynifico.  It  seemed  as  if  the  steel 
armor  of  De  Soto,  buried  in  the  oozy  bottom  of  the 
Mississippi  River,  touched  by  John  Law's  paper  wand, 
had  dissolved,  and  by  a  wonderful  alchemy  had  been 
turned  into  liquid  gold,  whose  exuberant  floods  were 
to  make  of  France  an  auriferous  Delta.  The  prophets 
of  a  rise  were  many,  the  real  profits  very  few ;  and  in 
four  years  the  principal  had  gone  where  De  Soto's 
armor  was  rusting.  The  golden  Armada  of  France 
was  snagged,  and  dispersed  beyond  the  reach  of  diver 
or  bell.  The  speed  with  which  shares,  swollen  from 
one  thousand  to  ten  thousand,  were  suddenly  pricked 
and  vanished,  and  the  rapid  changes  in  the  fortunes 
of  their  holders,  are  well  expressed  by  a  French  pas- 
quinade of  the  period  :  — 

"  Lnndi,  j'achetais  des  actions; 
Mardi,  je  gagnai  des  millions; 
Mercredi,  j'ornai  mon  menage; 
Jeudi,  je  pris  un  equipage ; 
Vendredi,  je  m'en  fis  au  bal ; 
Et  Samedi,  a  Phopital."  * 

MORAL.  —  Paper  Laws  are  not  as   trustworthy  as, 
although  more  shiny   than,  specie. 

*  Which  may  be  turned  out  of  its  native  bed  into  an  inferior  English 
one  thus :  — 

Monday,  some  shares  I  obtained ; 

Tuesday,  thereby  millions  I  gained; 

Wednesday,  my  establishment  grew; 

Thursday,  to  an  equipage  I  flew: 

Friday,  at  the  ball  I  long  tarried ; 

And  Saturday  to  the  poor-house  was  carried. 


200    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

The  experiments  of  the  colonists  thus  early  in  en- 
graved promises  showed  how  adventurous  and  hopeful 
they  had  become.  The  unfavorable  results  did  not 
indent  their  faith.  There  was  always  a  side-pocket 
for  American  losses.  In  this  they  clapped  their  broken 

bank-bills,  and  John  Lawr's  handsome  certificates  with 

^ 

the  wonderful  figures  that  had  "  cut  so  many  shines," 
and  went  on.  The  building  of  a  few  rice-machines, 
sugar-mills,  or  school-houses  was  checked  for  a  fe\v 
months  ;  the  clearing  of  some  lots  was  less  rapid  ;  the 
purchase  of  a  new  gown  for  Prudence,  or  a  new  waist- 
coat for  John  Smith's  great-great-grandson,  postponed ; 
but  the  subscriptions  to  the  Boston  "News-Letter" 
did  not  fall  off,  nor  the  Franklin  loaf  diminish  in 
weight. 

There  was  one  important  branch  of  American  in- 
dustry and  wealth  which  actually  increased  most  dur- 
ing the  severest  periods  of  financial  losses,-  the  manu- 
facturing of  children.  At  the  close  of  Queen  Anne's 
war,  in  1713,  the  Colonies  had  a  population  of  four 
hundred  thousand,  —  an  increase  of  one  hundred  and 
sixty-five  thousand  since  the  bars  were  let  down.  This 
population  doubled  during  the  next  thirty  years. 

So  many  new  boys  coming  forward  required  of 
course  more  training.  A  long-sighted  governor  of  the 
East  Indies,  Elihu  Yale  by  name,  reached  a  hand 
across  the  seas,  and  placed  some  books  and  a  little 
money  at  the  feet  of  a  few  wise-hearted,  men  in  Con- 
necticut, who  took  them  up,  and  planted  them  for  a 
few  years  at  Saybrook.  The  gits  thriving  well,  they 
were  transplanted  to  New  Haven.  Everybody  knows 
how  these  mustard  shoots  have  grown  ;  how  their 


COLONIES,  LOWER  HALF  OF  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.    201 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  ABROAD. 


9* 


202    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

sturdy  arms  ever  keep  touching  the  westering  borders, 
dropping  schoolmistresses  on  Southern  soils,  ministers 
on  Western  prairies,  spicy  editors  for  city  sandwiches ; 
even  their  dead  branches  enriching  the  deep  soils  of 
scientific  and  theologic  thought. 

The  planting  of  schools  increased.  It  was  always 
a  favorite  branch  of  American  husbandry.  The  school- 
house  was  frequently  the  first  seedling  put  in.  Now 
more  carefully  fenced  about,  it  became  the  qiverciis 
giganteus  Americanus,  —  to  our  plantations  what  the 
British  oak  is  on  an  English  estate,  the  glorious  spike 
that  rivets  it  to  the  wave-rocked  island.  Birch-trees 
could  hardly  supply  the  colonial  demand  upon  them. 
School-girls  opened  the  slate-quarries  for  chewing- 
pencils,  and  stripped  the  spruce-trees  for  gum.  Know- 
est  thou  not,  0  reader,  what  a  close  connection  there 
is  between  pencil  and  gum  chewing  and  female  educa- 
tion ?  If  not,  thou  hast  not  been  blessed  with  sisters 
between  the  liquid  ages  of  fourteen  and  seventeen,  and 
must  hasten  to  study  female  geology,  which  embeds 
between  its  slaty  folds  the  beautiful  ferns  and  flora  of 
knowledge.  Thou  must  betake  thyself  to  the  nearest 
seminary,  and  observe  the  sudden  and  deep  openings 
down  through  slate-lined  shafts  into  the  mines  of 
earthly  learning. 

The  treaty  of  Utrecht  in  1713  closed  and  sealed 
Queen  Anne's  war.  There  was  a  repose  through  the 
Colonies  for  thirty-one  years.  During  this  period  the 
Colonies  stretched  themselves,  took  in  new  ideas,  and 
let  out  the  strait  bandages  which  still  swathed  them. 
Delaware,  dandled  on  the  knee  of  Pennsylvania  until 
1708,  having  cut  her  first  teeth,  was  set  down  to  crow 


COLONIES,  LOWER  HALF  OF  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.    203 

like  a  young  cock  among  the  blue  hen's  chickens.  Ver- 
mont, as  we  have  before  seen,  undergoing  pretty 
rugged  nursing  through  her  vigorous  babyhood,  was  at 
last  plumped  upon  the  floor  by  New  York,  in  1724, 
with  a  smart  cuff  on  the  ears,  and  the  ungracious  and 
thankless  advice,  "  Now  go,  if  you  must,  and  take  care 
of  yourself."  The  youngster,  who  had  found  out  for 
some  time  that  she  could  not  only  run  alone,  but  could 
even  climb  up  to  her  own  Saddle-Back,  immediately 
started  off,  and  was  soon  seen  setting  up  education 
factories,  saw-mills,  meeting-houses,  and  nut-shellers, 
and  running  a  variety  of  very  transporting  businesses 
between  Lake  Champlain  and  the  Connecticut  River. 
It  was  a  long  time  before  she  got  her  lines  with  New 
York  out  of  tangle  and  settled ;  but  as  Vermonters 
never  felt  any  practical  difficulty  in  crossing  lines 
whenever  they  saw  pleasanter  ones  in  better  places, 
this  uncertainty  as  to  the  exact  limits  of  her  colonial 
cords  racier  facilitated  than  impeded  her  circulation 
and  growth.  New  Hampshire  —  well  out  at  length 
from  the  leading-strings  of  Massachusetts,  in  1741  — 
toddled  slowly  up  into  hardy  strength.  From  her 
whitened  hills  she  was  obliged  to  keep  a  sharp  look- 
out northwards  upon  the  saucy  French  and  tricky 
Indians,  and,  in  spite  of  all  her  sentries  and  vigilant 
scouts,  suffered  more  than  her  share  from  them  both. 
The  Indians  took  off  many  of  her  scalps  ;  but,  notwith- 
standing all  their  sharp  knives,  she  kept  her  Profile 
safe  and  unscarred,  and  was  even  Keene  enough  to 
outlive  the  neighboring  tomahawks  and  the  more 
distant  and  swooping  night-hawks  from  the  St.  Law- 
rence. 


204    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

New  York  was  stunted  in  her  growth  for  a  short 
time,  in  1741,  by  the  report  of  a  negro  plot.  It  turned 
out,  however,  to  be  "a  great  cry  and  little  wool." 
Yet  on  the  bare  suspicion  of  a  design  to  burn  the  city, 
more  than  tliirty  slaves  were  judicially  massacred. 
The  golden  waves  of  commerce,  however,  soon  closed 
over  the  momentary  plunge  of  the  sable  coffins,  and 
the  delusion,  like  that  at  Salem  half  a  century  before, 
rippled  away  from  the  spot  in  widening  circles  until 
it  broke  upon  the  historic  shore.  Some  events,  insig- 
nificant at  the  time,  grow  larger  as  they  approach  the 
higher  land  of  civilization ;  others,  magnified  by  local 
passion,  soon  sink  forever  out  of  sight.  The  former 
are  buoyed  up  by  the  life-floats  of  principle ;  the  lat- 
ter, unworthy  of  salvage,  break  and  vanish. 

Thus  the  contests  of  the  colonists  with  the  proprie- 
tors, slowly  marking  the  advancing  tide  of  civil  free- 
dom, are  hardened  on  the  shore  line  of  our  past  his- 
tory. Although  they  themselves  were  too  busy  in 
making  to  study  the  results  when  accomplished,  their 
descendants,  from  more  cultivated  heights,  ponder 
carefully  the  wave -tracks,  as  geologists  mark  and 
measure  the  traces  of  ancient  sea-marks  in  coal-beds, 
overlaid  to-day  with  the  weighty  accumulations  of 
ages.  On  the  other  hand,  the  petty  struggles  in  Vir- 
ginia, Massachusetts,  and  South  Carolina  to  establish 
ecclesiastical  supremacy,  and  in  other  Colonies  to  set 
up  sumptuary  laws  prescribing  the  number,  cost,  or 
cut  of  garments,  although  at  the  time  tossing  up 
great  masses  of  foam,  like  foam  speedily  dissolved 
into  nothingness. 

Great  doors  swing  on  small  hinges.     The  Colonies, 


COLONIES,  LOWER  HALF  OF  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.     205 

towards  the  close  of  the  first  half  of  the  century,  were 
destined  to  add  another  example  to  the  many  notable 
proofs  which  the  history  of  nations  before  them  had 
furnished  of  this  fact  historically  observed.  The  Mace- 
donian Empire  burst  over  the  little  excess  of  wine 
poured  one  day  into  Alexander's  cup.  The  chance 
meeting  of  Henry  VIII.  with  Anna  Boleyn  altered 
the  dynastic  current  and  the  religious  faith  of  Eng- 
land, changed  the  European  Atlas,  and  affected  for- 
ever the  settlement,  civilization,  and  characters  of  the 
American  Colonies.  The  acid  temper  of  Tetzel  pre- 
cipitated into  Luther's  cup,  raised  the  Eeformation 
into  sudden  effervescence.  The  evenly  grooved  dis- 
position of  William  the  Silent  was  a  pivotal  point 
around  which  the  liberties  of  the  Dutch  Republic 
safely  turned.  An  accident  might  have  easily  changed 
*the  character  or  shifted  that  individual  centre,  and 
sent  the  unbalanced  periphery  of  the  state  into  disas- 
trous confusion  or  ruin.  And  so  the  accidental  birth 
of  a  daughter,  instead  of  a  son,  to  Charles  VI.  of 
Austria,  was  an  unfortunate  windfall,  which  in  1744 
raised  a  tempest  of  war  that  enveloped  all  Europe,  and 
swept  with  fury  over  their  Transatlantic  Colonies. 
The  entire  Continent  was  marshalled  into  two  hostile 
camps  for  eight  years  ;  England,  France,  Austria,  Prus- 
sia, Spain,  Holland,  and  nearly  all  the  minor  states, 
let  out  their  best  blood,  —  the  heart's,  —  or  crippled 
the  best  limbs  of  their  young  and  middle-aged  men, 
spent  all  their  available  cash,  and  mortgaged  the  fu- 
ture ;  summer  fields  of  grain  were  trampled  out  and  re- 
manured  by  the  bone-dust  of  poor  soldiers ;  Fontenoy, 
Bergeii-op-Zoom,  and  other  places  were  made,  by  their 


206     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

horrors,  resorts  ever  since  of  idle  tourists ;  and  all 
Europe,  in  fact,  begirt  with  war-fires  which  burnt  up 
the  accumulated  wealth  of  generations,  —  and  all  be- 
cause of  that  little  windfall  on  the  lot  of  Charles  VI. 
Of  all  the  multitudes  maimed,  butchered,  or  consigned 
to  costly  pension  lists,  only  two  individuals  had  the 
slightest  interest  in  the  wild  carnival,  —  Maria  Theresa, 
the  windfall,  the  Pomona  apple  of  discord,  and  one 
Charles  Albert,  Elector  of  Bavaria.  France  and  Eng- 
land were  of  course  on  opposite  sides,  and  the  Co- 
lonial clocks  marked  Greenwich  or  Paris  time  as  the 
master  hands  set  them.  The  great  iron  pendulums 
on  each  side  the  sea  swung  together.  The  hour-hands 
constantly  set  off  bells  that  tolled  to  funerals.  The 
Colonies  followed  the  hearses  in  mourning  purchased 
by  themselves.  Genuine  Americans  already,  they  dis- 
dained to  mention  the  expense,  or  to  complain  that  it  * 
was  beyond  their  means.  In  spite  of  funerals,  how- 
ever, and  though  the  bells  toll  never  so  sadly,  boys 
will  grow. 

The  first  George  had  come  to  the  English  throne  in 
1714.  The  second,  third,  and  fourth  of  the  same 
name  successively  covered  it  with  their  persons  until 
1830,  —  a  century  of  English  Georgics,  full  enough  of 
bucolic  stupidity  and  ox-like  lolling  down  in  rich 
clover,  so  far  as  the  sovereigns  were  concerned,  but  ' 
bristling  with  short-horned  and  long-horned  wars  that 
pushed  and  gored  in  all  directions.  The  second  George, 
imported,  like  his  sire,  from  Hanover,  had  been  rolling 
in  the  rich  English  pastures  for  thirteen  years,  when 
the  war  of  which  we  are  now  speaking  commenced 
impaling  so  many  victims,  —  a  war  which  passes  in 


COLONIES,  LOWER  HALF  OF  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.     207 

our  American  chronicles  under  the  name  of  "  King 
George's  war,"  but  in  European  history  is  known  as 
"  the  war  of  the  Austrian  succession."  As  might  be 
expected,  after  the  old  stiff-necked  leader  of  the  Eng- 
lish herd  commenced  pushing  the  continental  cows, 
the  American  young  bulls  — possessing  all  the  red  fire 
and  knotted  thews  of  the  home  stock  —  sprung  over 
into  the  French  lot,  and  after  goring  and  receiving 
thrusts  from  the  Gallic  steers,  at  length,  in  1745,  made 
a  dash  at  Louisburg  in  the  island  of  Cape  Breton,  and 
ripped  it  out  of  the  side  of  French  America,  leaving  a 
sore  gash  that  festered  for  six  years. 

It  will  be  our  duty  hereafter  to  note  the  results  of 
these  wounds  in  mortifying  French  pride,  and  ulti- 
mately destroying  the  carefully  nursed  French  colonial 
stock  in  North  America. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  CHAMPIONSHIP  FOR  THE  AMERICAN  BELT. 
1754  TO  1763. 

No  Hopes  for  the  Millennium  in  American  Colonies  up  to  1754. —  More 
Swords  than  Ploughshares.  —  Mars  in  America.  —  Sixteen  Indian 
Wars  in  147  Years.  —  How  they  were  fed  by  French  Oil  and  blown 
by  French  Bellows.  —  The  Five  Great  Continental  Wars,  and  how 
they  reached  over  and  handled  the  Colonies.  —  The  Treaty  Patches, 
and  how  they  failed  to  cover  the  War  Breaches.  —  The  Volcanic  Char- 
acter of  American  Soil.  —  How  the  Animosities  of  France  and  Eng- 
land grew  through  Four  Centuries,  and  in  what  a  Hateful  Harvest  they 
waved,  in  1754,  each  Side  the  Sea.  —  Celebrated  Fights  between  the 
Rivals  in  Europe.  —  How  Commercial  Competition  rubbed  in  Salt 
Water,  and  Religious  Differences  Brimstone,  into  the  Wounds. — 
Memorable  Cases  of  Battle  Surgery.  —  The  Relative  Merits  of  English 
and  French  Claims  to  America  fully  stated.  —  Deeds  of  Land  and  of 
Arms  clash.  — French  Jesuits  with  Crosses  and  Traders  with  Skins 
encompass  the  English  Plantations  from  Maine  to  Minnesota,  and 
thence  to  Alabama  and  Texas.  —  Marquette,  Joliet,  La  Salle,  Lalle- 
mand,  and  others.  —  The  Former  escaped  the  Fast  Life  of  Chicago,  and 
La  Salle  the  Hazards  of  Natchez.  —  France  seeks  to  fasten  a  Remark- 
able Rosary  around  the  Neck  of  Young  America  ;  England  to  cut  it. 

—  Suitors  to  the  same  Maiden,  they  suited  not  her  nor  each  other.  — 
Their  soft  Ways  to  her.  —  Their  Hardness  to  each  other.  —  Their  Long 
Quarrels  over  her  Person  and  Purse  result  at  last  in  a  Decisive  Fight. 

—  The  Championship  for  the  American  Belt.  —  The  Champions,  the 
Belt,  and  the  Ring  described.  —  How  John  Bull  and  Jean  Crapeau 
stepped  into  the  Latter.  —  The   Nine  Rounds  from  1754  to  1763.  — 
How  Mr.  Bull  won  ;  what  he   said,  and  how  Monsieur  Crapeau  be- 
haved. —  A  Suitor  pleased,  and  a  Suitor  non-suited. 

THE  American  colonists  up  to  1754  could  not  well 
entertain,  from  their  own  experience,  any  well- 
founded  hopes  of  the  speedy  advent  of  the  millennium, 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR   THE  AMERICAN  BELT.     209 

when  meek-eyed  Peace  is  to  hold  the  good  reapers 
— McCormicks  or  others  —  beaten  out  from  ugly 
swords,  and  when  war  is  to  be  banished  somewhere, 
probably  to  that  red-faced  Mars,  whose  vulgar  man- 
ners, bricky  hair,  and  swaggering  gait  have  not  un- 
frequently  brought  him  into  disgrace  with  his  neigh- 
bors, particularly  with  the  touchy  Venus,  and  some- 
times put  him  into  an  eclipse  with  that  steady-go- 
ing old  tramper,  the  Earth.  But  somehow,  in  spite 
of  his  disreputable  antecedents,  Mars  had  contrived  to 
acquire  a  very  strong  influence  over  that  part  of  our 
planet  occupied  by  the  thirteen  Colonies,  from  the  time 
of  the  very  first  settlement  at  Jamestown,  in  1607, 
throughout  all  the  century  and  a  half  which  followed. 
Over  that  tract  of  time,  their  march  along  the  highway 
of  life  was  like  an  Irish  landlord's  visit  to  his  own  es- 
tate, —  armed,  grim,  and  hostilely  interrogative  of  all 
who  approached.  Like  his,  their  advance,  too,  was 

"  Per  ignes 
Suppositos  cineri  doloso." 

During  the  one  hundred  and  forty-seven  years  of 
which  we  speak,  sixteen  distinct  wars  with  various 
Indian  tribes  or  confederacies,  averaging  one  every 
nine  years,  had  been  carried  on  at  various  points,  from 
the  extreme  northeast  to  the  farthest  southern  border. 
In  these  wars,  formal  expeditions  were  organized, 
bodies  of  troops,  large  for  the  populations,  raised, 
equipped,  and  sent  out  amid  the  sighs  of  young  ladies 
and  the  fears  of  their  mothers,  punishing  old  mas- 
sacres, and  wasting,  like  prairie  fires,  whole  districts, 
and  of  course  kindling  other  Indian  resentments  that 
swept  back  over  the  settlements. 

N 


210    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

Over  nearly  all  of  these  combustible  war  piles  it 
was  found  that  French  oil  was  poured  to  make  the 
fire  take  readily,  and  French  bellows  were  at  work  to 
blow  the  savage  flames  into  a  disastrous  conflagration. 
Between  these  more  formidable  expeditions  were  inter- 
jected petty  skirmishes,  midnight  attacks,  sorties,  and 
reprisals,  as  numerous  and  as  little  regarded  by  the 
colonists  in  general  as  railroad  killings  or  corpora- 
tion massacres  with  us.  Guns  and  swords  were  as 
common  in  farmers'  houses,  as  spades  and  hoes  to-day. 
Arrows  to  the  right,  left,  and  in  front  of  them,  pointed 
many  colonial  morals,  and  adorned  many  a  sad  tale  of 
border  life.  Bloody  Brooks  were  christened  with  red 
water  in  three  different  settlements  ;  and  poor,  indeed, 
are  the  annals  of  that  town  —  whose  records  reach  back 
beyond  the  half-way  mile-stone  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury —  that  cannot  show  the  garnishments  of  the  bow 
and  arrow.  Few,  indeed,  were  the  families  of  New 
England  that  could  keep  the  Passover,  commemora- 
tive of  exemptions  from  the  terrible  visitations  of  the 
Indian  smiter. 

Besides  these  chronic  and  almost  ceaseless  domestic 
troubles,  the  great  continental  wars — those  of  1651 
and  1664  between  England  and  Holland,  in  1656 
between  England  and  Spain,  King  William's  war 
from  1688  to  1697,  Queen  Anne's  from  1702  to  1713, 
and  that  free  European  fight  for  the  Austrian  succes- 
sion which  closed  the  half-century,  covering  in  all 
twenty-nine  years  on  this  side  the  sea  —  drew  be- 
tween their  mailed  hands  the  tender  Colonies,  wrenched 
their  young  and  growing  interests  from  them,  and 
hurled  their  protectors  sometimes  against  the  French 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOE   THE  AMERICAN   BELT.     211 

of  Acadia  and  New  France,  sometimes  against  the 
ever-hostile  Indian  tribes.  The  patched-up  peaces 
which  followed  these  great  wars,  and  which  covered 
the  European  breaches,  left  the  colonial  combatants 
battered  and  bruised,  ragged  in  clothes,  in  debt  for 
expenses,  and  in  mourning  for  the  lost,  with  French- 
men and  Indians  irritated  by  the  conflict,  and  goaded 
into  hot  revenges,  which  even  the  snows  of  New 
France  could  not  cool. 

In  a  word,  the  entire  belt  of  land  northwards  and 
westward  of  the  plantations  was  highly  volcanic,  some 
peak  almost  continually  in  eruption,  while  always 
throughout  its  whole  extent  mutterings  under  the 
cindered  heat  threatened  wide-shaking  action  and 
crimsoned  tidal  waves. 

The  animosity  between  the  French  and  English 
races  in  Europe,  in  1754,  almost  surpasses  our  be- 
lief. For  four  centuries,  from  the  days  of  Edward  I. 
and  the  black-mailed  Prince,  who,  with  their  armies, 
overran  France,  almost  as  numerously,  and  wrought  as 
violently  on  her  pride  and  taste  as  the  irruptions  of 
green-backed  Americans  to-day,  French  and  English 
armies  in  the  field,  navies  on  the  sea,  wit,  caricature, 
heavy-folioed  bombs,  light  artillery,  pasquinades,  and 
exploding  mines  of  sarcasm  and  raillery,  not  only 
mounded  new  graves  on  either  side  the  Channel,  and 
gashed  ever-reminding  physical  wounds,  but  fretted 
and  frayed  Saxon  self-complacency  and  Gallic  egotism. 
Cressy,  in  1346 ;  Agincourt,  in  1415  ;  the  battle  of 
the  Spurs,  in  1513  ;  the  war  in  aid  of  the  Huguenots, 
in  1627 ;  Blenheim  and  Malplaquet,  in  1706  and 
1709, —  planted  bitter  memories  that  waved  continually 


212    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

in  vigorous  harvests  of  rancorous  hatred.  Jealous 
rivals  stood  by  to  remind  each  of  her  supposed  dis- 
graces, and  thus  to  profit  by  new  quarrels.  Commer- 
cial competition  rubbed  salt  water  into  the  raw  places. 
Differences  of  religious  faith  chafed  them  with  brim- 
stone. Squibs,  tossed  backwards  and  forwards,  lit  on 
inflamed  parts,  and  raised  national  sores.  Spanish- 
fly  several  times  drew  angry  blisters,  and  proud  flesh 
often  set  in  around  the  edges.  Plasters  were  of  course 
put  on  by  diplomatic  surgeons ;  but  the  trouble  was 
deeper  than  their  patches  could  reach.  The  knife  and 
steel  scissors  were  then  brought  in  again,  and  the 
national  vivisections  began  anew.  These  surgical 
operations  were  almost  constantly  going  on,  and  their 
description  in  Hume,  Eobertson,  and  other  historians, 
might  be  appropriately  called  Memoirs  of  Celebrated 
Cases  in  Surgery. 

It  must  be  remembered  that,  at  the  period  to  which 
we  are  drawing  the  reader's  attention,  railroads  and 
swift  steamers  had  not  yet  ironed  out  the  stiff  mastiff- 
like  ruffles  around  the  necks  of  these  high-spirited, 
full-blooded  nations.  International  expositions  had 
not  spread  their  cloths  over  the  Field  of  Gold,  on 
which  rapiers  should  only  be  used  to  cut  English 
roast  beef  and  French  pudding,  and  helmets  be  turned 
up  into  drinking-cups,  to  quaff,  in  cool  Bordeaux, 
toasts  to  the  entente  cordial  of  solid  peace.  On  the 
contrary,  at  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
mutual  hatred  of  the  two  nations  saturated  everything. 
National  drinks,  popular  on  one  side  of  the  twenty- 
mile  strait  which  parted  the  imbibers,  were  poisons  on 
the  other.  Clothes,  worn  by  one  race,  were  not  only 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR   THE   AMERICAN   BELT.    213 

shunned,  but  caricatured  with  pen  and  pencil  by  the 
other.  The  paintings,  the  plastic  arts,  the  literature, 
and  legislation  of  the  period  have  preserved  in  endur- 
ing forms  the  widely  felt  antipathy.  Their  mutual 
rancor  dissolved  the  obligations  of  courtesy,  dripped 
through  diplomatic  despatches,  and  left  the  green 
mould  of  jealousy  on  all  the  relations  of  the  two  gov- 
ernments, and  even  the  business  transactions  of  their 
people. 

This  envenomed  home  feeling  had  early  crossed  the 
Atlantic,  and  lost  none  of  its  acridity  on  the  passage. 
In  point  of  time  the  English  were  before  the  French 
in  their  American  discoveries,  but  in  settlement  the 
French  preceded  the  English.  While  the  Cabots, 
the  first  Englishmen  who  ran  down  our  country,  touch- 
ing in  1498  at  Newfoundland,  and  thence  coasting 
along  our  shores  as  far  as  Florida,  without  leaving 
any  colonists  behind  them,  anticipated  Verizzanni,  the 
first  French  discoverer  in  America,  by  twenty-five 
years,  the  French  under  Cartier  in  1534,  Koberval 
in  1542,  and  Eibault  in  1562,  landed  and  made 
fugitive  settlements  at  various  points,  from  the  Hu- 
guenot plantation  in  South  Carolina  northwards  around 
the  present  Provinces  of  Newfoundland,  Nova  Scotia, 
and  New  Brunswick,  and  up  the  St.  Lawrence  as 
far  westward  as  Montreal.  Over  this  entire  broad 
strip  they  had  affixed  the  label  "  New  France."  The 
English  made  no  further  discoveries  of,  nor  any  settle- 
ments in,  America,  after  Cabot's  expedition,  until  1583, 
when  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  freighted  with  a  charter 
from  Queen  Elizabeth,  sailed  for  Virginia  with  a  com- 
pany of  settlers.  This  was  rapidly  followed  up,  with 


214    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

little  permanent  result,  however,  by  Kaleigh,  Gran- 
ville,  and  Gosuold.  The  French  settlement  of  Port 
Royal,  on  the  Bay  of  Fundy,  antedated  that  of  the. 
English  at  Jamestown  five  years. 

England  and  France  now  vied  with  each  other  in 
granting  large  deeds  of  American  territory,  most  of 
which  conflicted  with  each  other,  as  their  martial 
deeds  had  done  at  home.  The  English  Henry  VII. 
granted  to  Mr.  John  Cabot  all  the  lands  which  he 
might  discover,  reserving  to  his  royal  self  a  small 
commission  of  twenty  per  cent.  Five  years  later  the 
French  Henry  IV.,  without  employing  any  lawyer  to 
search  the  title,  gave  to  De  Monts  so  much  of  the 
same  North  American  lot  as  now  embraces  Pennsyl- 
vania, New  Jersey,  New  York,  the  New  England 
States,  and  the  confederated  Dominion  of  Canada. 
Other  unwarrantable  warranty  deeds  were  subse- 
quently made  and  done  by  the  rival  grantors,  involv- 
ing the  titles  in  distressing  doubt  and  confusion. 
Military  actions  of  ejectment  followed.  As  early  as 
1629,  Champlain  and  his  French  colony  were  driven 
from  Quebec,  like  squatters  on  the  property  of  another, 
and  the  French  would  then  have  been  all  ejected  from 
New  France  but  for  an  unwise  and  ignorant  settle- 
ment between  the  two  large  European  landlords,^ 
called  the  Treaty  of  1630.  Subsequently  the  French 
were  dispossessed,  as  we  have  elsewhere  recorded,  of 
patches  of  the  large  estate  given  to  De  Monts, —  Nova 
Scotia  in  1710,  and  Cape  Breton  in  1745,  —  mere 
strips,  it  is  true,  compared  with  that  broad-sweeping 
tract  around  which  they  had  carried  chain  and  com- 
pass, and  planted  the  boundary  stakes  of  stockades 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR   THE   AMERICAN   BELT.     215 

and  forts,  but  which  touched  their  national  pride  at 
its  very  heart  centre. 

The  French  growth  in  America  was  as  steady  as  it 
was  early  in  starting.  Five  years  before  the  Pilgrim 
fathers  and  mothers  landed  at  Plymouth,  French 
missionaries  had  erected  bark  chapels  in  Maine,  and 
consigned  by  devout  rites  the  Pine  State  to  the  Vir- 
gin's protection.  While  the  Calvinists  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay,  the  Plymouth  Colony,  and  Connecticut 
were  sturdily  settling,  by  wordy  argument,  the 
grounds  of  their  religious  belief,  Fathers  Brebeuf, 
Lallemand,  and  other  Gallic  Jesuits  were  steadily 
and  stealthily  acquiring  new  grounds  for  the  Pope 
and  the  French  king.  Barefooted  emissaries,  in 
serge,  and  girded,  like  the  Baptist  in  the  Judsean  wil- 
derness, with  girdles  about  their  loins,  patiently  and 
slowly  travelling  twelve  hundred  miles  westward,  foot- 
weary,  yet  sustained  by  spiritual  zeal,  skirted  those 
inland  seas,  Lakes  Ontario,  Erie,  Huron,  and  Michigan, 
crossed  the  head-waters  of  the  Hudson,  the  Ohio,  and 
Wisconsin,  hauled  their  birch  canoes  over  regions 
now  boiling  with  oil-wells,  hissing  with  steam-driven 
factories,  or  lit  up  by  the  passing  splendors  of  palace 
rail-cars,  and  had  thus,  as  early  as  1650,  planted  the 
Eoman  cross  and  the  French  lily  side  by  side,  as  far 
west  as  Fond  du  Lac,  and  the  cool  head-fountains  of 
Lake  Superior.  Fur-traders  followed  the  Jesuit  mis- 
sionaries. These  sought  to  clothe  the  Indians  with  a 
warm  belief  in  the  teachings  of  the  Society  of  Jesus, 
and  in  the  supremacy  of  his  Catholic  Majesty  of 
France;  those  hastened  after  to  unclothe  the  otter, 
the  beaver,  and  other  living  fur-dealers  of  the  small 


216         THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR   THE   AMERICAN   BELT.    217 

packs  which  they  carried  on  their  own  backs,  and  to 
obtain  possession  of  those  which  their  fellows  had 
yielded  up  to  the  sharp  persuasions  of  the  cinnamon- 
stained  hunters  and  trappers.  Eeligious  zeal,  inflam- 
ing French  blood,  and  glowing  through  a  patriotic 
national  emulation  with  the  English  settlements  along 
the  Atlantic  slope,  within  the  next  twenty-five  years, 
launched  canoes  upon  and  traversed  the  great  lakes 
pushed  down  the  principal  rivers  running  southward 
from  Quebec  to  St.  Paul,  gathered  proselytes  by 
preaching,  and  skins  by  trading,  and  encompassing 
the  needs,  instincts,  and  revenges  of  the  various  Indian 
tribes  scattered  through  this  vast  region,  —  excepting 
always  the  Five  Nations,  which  uniformly  adhered  to 
the  English,  —  established  a  cordon  of  French  alli- 
ances and  influences,  which  in  time  of  peace  stretched 
its  protecting  line  between  them  and  their  English 
rivals,  and  in  war  vibrated  to  their  touch,  and  twanged 
quivers  full  of  arrows  qn  their  hereditary  foes.  These 
unwearying  teachers  and  traders  were  now  to  take 
possession,  in  the  name  of  France  and  Eome,  of  the 
valley  of  the  Mississippi,  and  to  scatter  the  seeds  of 
Gallic  civilization  all  down  its  prolific  breadth,  and 
over  its  wide  deltas,  Texas,  Louisiana,  Mississippi, 
and  Alabama.  In  1673,  the  Jesuit,  James  Marquette, 
having  previously  penetrated  from  Quebec  through 
the  intervening  wilderness  to  Sault  St.  Marie,  and 
there  established  the  first  white  settlement  in  the 
present  State  of  Michigan,  set  out,  with  Joliet  and  two 
tawny  interpreters,  to  trace  the  mysteries  of  the  Great 
Elver  of  America.  Sailing  down  the  Wisconsin  Eiver, 
and  reaching  in  a  few  days  that  wide-rolling  flood 


218    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

which  we  now  call  the  Mississippi  Eiver,  and  floating 
on  its  rough  but  kindly  bosom  for  one  hundred  and 
eighty  miles,  they  landed  on  its  western  bank,  and, 
crossing  a  narrow  portage,  struck,  without  hurting, 
the  Des  Moines  Eiver.  They  were  the  first  white 
men  in  Iowa,  and  next  to  De  Soto,  one  hundred  and 
thirty-one  years  before  them,  the  only  pale  children 
that  had  ever  looked  into  the  wrinkled  face  of  the 
Father  of  Waters.  Here  they  were  met  by  four  red 
men,  who,  in  answer  to  their  inquiries,  loftily  pro- 
claimed themselves  to  be  "  Illinois  "  or  "  Men."  The 
spirit  of  Chicago,  thus  filtrated,  antedated  its  own 
settlement  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Ee- 
embarking,  these  Gallic  adventurers  swept  on  down 
the  rapidly  rushing  river  unsnagged ;  passed  in  safety 
the  large  open  mouth  of  the  Missouri ;  overlooked  the 
future  site  of  St.  Louis ;  refused  to  listen  to  the  temp- 
tation which  beckoned  them  to  ascend  the  Ohio  to  the 
future  metropolis  of  bacon  ;  floated  along  over  the  rust- 
ing armor  of  De  Soto,  without  diving  for  it,  keeping  a 
good  lookout  on  the  dangerous  territory  of  Arkansas 
on  their  right,  and  Mississippi  on  their  left,  until  they 
at  last  reached  the  point  where  the  Arkansas  Eiver 
hastens  to  throw  its  burden  of  earth  and  water  upon 
the  back  of  the  giant  stream.  Here  they  found  In- 
dians with  European  weapons  of  steel ;  and  they  re- 
turned back,  retracing  their  courageous  steps  home- 
ward. Marquette,  let  us  add,  preached  for  two  years 
to  the  wild  men  in  and  around  the  future  Chicago, 
and  finally  died  upon  the  borders  of  a  little  stream  in 
Michigan,  which  gratefully  perpetuates  his  name  in 
its  own. 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR  THE  AMERICAN   BELT.    219 

Brave  Marquette  !  He  escaped  the  perils  of  Chi- 
cago to  yield  up  his  spirit  amid  the  innocencies  of 
Michigan. 

In  1682  La  Salle,  the  French  fur-trader,  ventured 
down  the  Mississippi  to  the  Gulf,  without  stopping  to 
take  the  bluff  outposts  that  sentinelled  the  future 
Vicksburg,  and  without  halting  over  night  at  Natchez, 
and  encountering  the  loss  of  all  his  earnings  in  that 
hazardous,  porous,  and  absorbing  place.  Two  years 
later  he  formed  one  of  a  colony  sent  out  from  Eochelle, 
in  France,  by  the  minister  Colbert,  and  was  wrecked 
in  the  Bay  of  Metagorda,  the  first  of  that  large  series 
of  castaways  in  that  peculiarly  enterprising  empire 
called  Texas. 

France  thus  added  the  lone  star  to  her  American 
constellation. 

Although  the  entire  French  population  in  America, 
in  1688,  was,  by  their  own  count,  only  eleven  thou- 
sand two  hundred  and  forty-nine,  against  more  than 
ten  times  that  number  of  English-speaking  colonists, 
they  had  ere  the  close  of  that  century  erected  mission- 
houses  and  trading-posts  from  the  mouth  of  the  Ken- 
nebec,  in  Maine,  westward  and  northward  to  the 
Falls  of  Minnehaha,  and  southward  down  the  Missis- 
sippi, through  Louisiana,  Texas,  and  Southern  Missis- 
sippi. French  forts  and  stockades  showed  defiant 
guns  at  Niagara,  Crown  Point,  Detroit,  St.  Louis,  and 
along  the  mud-bearing  delta  of  the  river,  that  La 
Salle  had,  first  of  white  men,  overcome  with  a  birch 
canoe. 

Eastward  the  adventurous  French  next  advanced 
along  the  sinuous  shores  of  the  Gulf.  In  1702,  on 


220     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

the  western  bank  of  the  Mobile  Kiver,  and  upon  the 
thirsty  sand-plain  which  comes  down  to  drink  its 
waters,  Mobile  was  founded  by  Bienville.  Two  years 
following,  an  invoice  of  twenty  young  French  girls  was 
sent  out  to  help  the  census-taker.  The  lot  suiting  well, 
a  second  consignment  of  twenty-three  was  despatched 
the  next  year.  These  vivacious  goods,  however,  it 
may  be  incidentally  remarked,  rose  the  following  year, 
in  price  and .  self-estimation,  and  formed  what  is  called 
"The  Petticoat  Insurrection,"  a  rebellion  against  the 
limited  amount  of  Indian  corn  served  out  during  a 
season  of  scarcity.  But  more  corn  coming  out  they 
acknowledged  it,  and  went  down  in  pleased  submis- 
sion and  quiet. 

Lively  Frenchmen  now  multiplied  along  the  yeasty 
Gulf.  In  1718  Bienville,  then  -the  French  governor 
of  Louisiana,  courageously  braving  the  alligators  and 
swamp  snakes,  whose  crescent  attitude  might  have 
terrified  a  son  of  St.  Patrick,  began  the  city  of  New 
Orleans,  of  which,  four  years  afterwards,  Charlevoix, 
the  historian  and  traveller,  who  visited  it,  gives  this 
description :  "  The  place  has  a  population  of  about  two 
hundred.  I  find  it  to  consist  of  one  hundred  cabins 
disposed  with  little  regularity ;  a  large  wooden  ware- 
house ;  two  or  three  dwellings  that  would  be  no  orna- 
ment to  a  French  village,  and  the  half  of  a  sorry  store- 
house, which  they  were  pleased  to  lend  to  the  Lord, 
but  of  which  he  had  scarcely  taken  possession  when 
it  was  proposed  to  turn  him  out  to  lodge  in  a  tent." 
These  kind  of  loans,  some  maliciously  aver,  have  con- 
tinued fashionable  in  the  Crescent  City  from  that  time 
to  the  present.  However  that  may  be,  certain  it  is 


THE  CHAMPIONSHIP  FOB  THE  AMERICAN   BELT.          221 


222    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

that  the  French  settlements  in  America  —  a  succinct 
narrative  of  which  we  had  purposely  deferred  to  give 
in  connection  with  their  last  desperate  struggle  for 
power  —  had  at  the  close  of  King  George's  war,  in 
1748,  reached  their  greatest  extension.  Imperial,  too, 
was  their  stretch.  Beginning  at  St.  John's,  New 
Brunswick,  and  dotting  the  wide  area  that  fills  seven- 
teen hundred  miles  between  that  point  and  the  Missis- 
sippi Eiver,  at  the  present  spunky  little  city  of  St.  Paul, 
and  stretching  down  that  river  fourteen  hundred  miles 
to  its  outlet,  and  so  spreading  westward  into  Texas,  and 
eastward  through  Mississippi  and  Alabama,  until  they 
confronted  the  old  Spanish  plantation  in  Florida,  these 
settlements  zoned  on  three  sides  with  a  spiked  belt 
the  thirteen  English  Colonies  on  the  Atlantic. 

Around  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
accumulations  of  hatred  through  the  preceding  four 
had  gathered  to  a  festering  head  the  hostile  memo- 
ries of  the  French  race  of  English  assumption,  vic- 
tories, and  national  contempt ;  and  so  through  all 
this  wide  circuit  of  settlement,  under  cassock  and 
surplice,  under  the  coat  of  the  soldier  and  the  bear- 
skin of  the  trader,  beat  zealous  French  hearts,  ready 
to  assert  the  claims  of  a  king  deemed  by  them  right- 
fully in  possession,  and  to  earn  the  absolution  of  a 
spiritual  sovereign  at  Eome,  ready,  since  the  schism  of 
Henry  VIII.,  to  be  given  to  any  one  who  would  de- 
spoil or  destroy  the  heretic  English. 

Young  America,  now  at  the  budding  period  of  her 
sweet  sixteen,  was,  with  her  personal  charms,  her 
ample  landed  dower,  and  her  ampler  future  expecta- 
tions, a  damsel  well  worth  the  keenest  and  best  efforts 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR  THE  AMERICAN  BELT.    223 

of  the  two  European  rivals.  France,  besides  being 
fired  with  the  desire  of  getting  possession  of  the  large 
commissions  likely  to  accrue  from  the  handling  her 
handsome  estate,  was  anxious  to  make  her  Roman 
Catholic.  For  one  hundred  years  she  had  been  en- 
deavoring to  persuade  the  young  girl  to  take  from 
herself  and  place  around  her  fair  neck  a  rosary,  among 
whose  beads,  at  regular  intervals,  were  interspersed 
some  larger  than  the  others  wrought  into  shapes  of 
cannon,  swivels,  little  forts,  and  stockades. 

England,  ever  looking  after  rich  wards  in  chancery, 
with  solid,  landed  cares,  requiring  a  guardian;  had  as 
assiduously  sought  to  gain  the  custody,  and  even  to 
win  the  hand  of  the  fresh  and  rosy  American.  She 
had  not  failed  to  observe  the  long  and  carefully  made 
rosary,  and  had  sought  several  times  angrily  to  tear  it 
off  her  neck  with  a  glaived  hand,  and  had  more  than 
once  instigated  the  Iroquois  to  cut  the  shining  chain 
at  Lakes  Champlain  and  Erie  and  on  the  Monongahela, 
and  to  scatter  the  metallic  beads.  She  had  also  sent 
emissaries  from  the  seaboard  westward,  bearing  Prot- 
estant school-houses  and  churches,  mission-houses, 
traders'  articles,  and  Saxon  notions,  to  barter  and 
exchange  for  the  coveted  rosary. 

Each  of  the  suitors,  it  was  evident,  was  more  intent 
upon  the  maiden's  fortune  than  her  affections,  more 
concerned  about  her  lots  than  her  lot.  It  was  also 
abundantly  manifest  that  the  long-standing  feuds  and 
contentions  over  her  possession  and  custody  must  at 
last  and  forever  be  decided. 

The  fight  for  the  championship  for  the  belt  of 
America  could  no  longer  be  postponed. 


224    THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

John  Bull,  bluff,  beef-fed,  plucky,  and  long-winded, 
•weighing  forty  stone,  stepped  into  the  ring,  tossed  his 
tarpaulin  to  the  centre,  and  having  tipped  off  a  bottle 
of  Bass's  double  XX,  challenged  Johnny  Crapeau  to 
fight  it  out  for  the  lass.  The  Frenchman  stripped  at 
once  for  the  fight,  and  with  a  nimble  courtesy,  thinly 
concealing  his  disdain,  glided  within  the  ropes  which 
now  surrounded  the  champions  of  Europe.  Into  the 
middle  of  the  ring  the  belt  was  thrown.  It  was  em- 
broidered with  Indian  bead-work  at  one  end  and  with 
beautifully  wrought  and  valuable  cotton  fringes  at  the 
other,  while  picturesque  figures  of  forest,  lake,  and 
plain  set  off  the  centre,  and  precious  jewels  and  costly 
stones  glittered  all  along  either  edge. 

For  nine  years  that  great  and  deadly  boxing-match 
lasted. 

Why  should  we  dwell  upon  it  in  detail  ?  The 
world's  reporters  were  there,  and  have  given  full  and 
accurate  accounts,  which  have  been  read  everywhere, 
except  in  France,  with  animated  interest. 

Most  briefly,  however,  we  may  summarize  the  con- 
test. 

At  the  first  call,  each  competitor  came  promptly 
forward,  each  eying  the  other  warily,  but  with  ill- 
suppressed  dislike  and  jealousy.  Some  feints  fol- 
lowed. A  few  passes  were  cautiously  made,  as  if  , 
each  was  measuring  his  adversary  and  feeling  for  his 
strong  and  weak  points.  At  length  a  rapid  and  dex- 
terous touch  of  Mr.  Bull's  stomach  sent  him  uneasily 
back  to  his  corner.  Time  was  called  for  the  second 
round  in  1755,  and,  leaping  forward,  the  alert  Gaul 
struck  his  heavy,  blundering  antagonist  in  a  weak  spot 


THE   CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR   THE  AMERICAN  BELT.    225 

in  front,  called  Fort  du  Quesne,  from  which  he  reeled 
back  to  his  place,  and  was  held  up  for  a  time  in  a 
fainting  condition  by  one  George  Washington,  a  young 
man  of  twenty-two,  then  a  friend  of  Mr.  Bull,  and  in- 
vited to  be  present.  Eecovering  after  a  little  time, 
Mr.  Bull  suddenly  sprang  up  in  intense  suffering  and 
mortification,  and  made  across  the  ring  in  fury ;  but 
scarcely  had  he  got  within  reach  of  the  Frenchman, 
when  he  received  a  stunning  blow  on  his  very  Crown 
Point.  Time  being  up,  the  stout  Briton  again  advanced 
towards  his  adversary  with  a  most  menacing  manner, 
and  struck  out  full  from  the  shoulder,  as  if  he  in- 
tended to  leave  an  awkward  scar  in  the  face,  but 
missing  his  footing,  he  fell  forward  in  a  pool  of  water, 
named  Ontario,  the  angry  Gaul  rolling  over  him, 
and  punishing  him  when  down  in  a  manner  deemed 
almost  foul  by  the  spectators.  On  the  fourth  round, 
in  1757,  the  Saxon  pugilist  rushed  confidently  forward, 
and  aimed  a  direct  thrust  at  a  very  ugly  pimple  on 
the  Frenchman's  face,  called  Louisburg ;  but  the  Celt 
skilfully  parried  the  home  thrust,  and,  while  his  adver- 
sary was  gathering  himself  to  a  second  onset,  delivered 
a  regular  Montcalm  settler  at  Ticonderoga,  a  very 
tender  British  point,  which  drew  blood  in  profusion. 

Thus  far  the  heavy  Englishman  had  been  worsted 
in  every  encounter;  but  on  the  next  round  he  ad- 
vanced from  his  wintry  corner  with  great  caution,  set 
his  teeth  together  firmly,  and,  making  a  feint,  struck 
his  antagonist,  ere  he  had  recovered,  two  quick,  telling 
blows,  one  on  his  face,  completely  crushing  that  ugly 
pimple,  and  the  other  on  that  spot  in  the  chest  still 
sore,  Fort  du  Quesne ;  but  while  the  Englishman  was 
10*  o 


226     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

all  too  intent  upon  these,  his  antagonist  got  in  an- 
other Montcalm  settler  on  that  English  mouth.  Lake 
Champlain,  which  brought  out  blood  and  water  quite 
distressing  for  innocent  spectators  to  witness. 

Both  parties  now  retired  to  their  corners,  the  French- 
man pretty  well  exhausted,  Mr.  Bull  just  getting 
warmed  up  to  the  fight,  and  both,  if  possible,  more  in- 
furiated than  ever.  Each  was  thoroughly  sponged,  and 
on  time  being  called  for  the  sixth  round,  in  1759, 
John  Bull  strode  completely  across  the  ring  to  the 
spot  which  his  adversary  had  chosen,  glaring  like  a 
very  Wolfe.  He  had  tasted  blood,  his  own  was  up, 
and  his  leonine  nature  was  roused  for  a  crushing 
spring.  Quickly  and  rapidly  he  planted  a  blow  be- 
tween the  Gaul's  blue  eyes,  breaking  the  bridge  of  his 
nose  at  Point  Levi.  To  evade  this  blow,  the  Gaul 
leaped  back  and  attempted  to  parry  it,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  inflict  upon  his  enemy  another  Mont- 
calm  settler ;  but  quick  as  thought  Mr.  Bull,  heavy  as 
he  was,  sprang  upon  a  small  mound  called  the  Plains 
of  Abraham,  and  there,  swinging  his  sinewy  arm  high 
in  the  air,  brought  down  his  ponderous  fist  full  upon 
the  Frenchman's  head.  Staggering  backwards  to  the 
ropes,  the  Celt  fell  headlong,  bloody  and  cruelly  hurt. 

To  the  on-lookers  it  was  manifest  that  the  hot  con- 
test was  virtually  decided ;  but  a  resentment  that 
pulsed  through  every  vein  urged  the  Frenchman  to  a 
few  more  unsuccessful  efforts.  Coming  up  slowly  to 
the  summons  in  the  three  last  rounds,  in  1760,  1761, 
and  1762,  just  making  time  and  saving  himself  from 
»the  confession  of  defeat,  he  sank  down  at  the  end  of 
the  ninth  round,  spent  in  spirits  and  strength,  but 


THE  CHAMPIONSHIP   FOR   THE  AMERICAN  BELT.    227 


228    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED  STATES. 

vexed  and  angry  with  his  adverse  fortune.  A  herald, 
advancing  in  the  centre  of  the  ring,  proclaimed  that 
Johnny  Crapeau  withdrew  his  claim  to  the  belt,  only 
stipulating,  in  consideration  of  the  past,  that  he  might 
keep  a  bit  of  the  fringe  off  its  western  end. 

John  Bull,  picking  up  the  coveted  prize,  announced 
in  a  bluff,  resolute  voice  to  the  by-standers  that  the 
young  lady,  with  the  belt,  dower,  and  expectations,  all 
now  passed  to  him  forever. 

Future  chapters  will  show  how  little  he  knew  of  the 
maiden  whom  he  claimed  to  have  won. 

Meanwhile  Jean  Crapeau  signed  and  delivered  to  his 
English  victor  a  release  of  all  his  claims  to  the  dam- 
sel's lands  lying  east  of  the  Mississippi. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

CAUSES  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

The  People  as  Yeast.  —  The  Fermentation.  — Washington,  Samuel  Adams, 
Patrick  Henry,  Rutledge,  Franklin,  Otis,  and  others,  and  their  Value 
in  the  Colonial  Fermenting-Pots.  —  State  Courtships  in  1754, 1765,  and 
1774,  tend  to  a  more  Perfect  Union.  —  How  Home  Confidences  oper- 
ate. —  What  Effect  the  English  Navigation  Acts  had  on  American 
Swimmers.  —  Lord  North  and  Charles  Townshend. — Colonial  Assem- 
blies and  Country  Dances. —  Dislike  of  Impositions.  —  That  small 
Boston  Tea-Party.  —  The  large  Amount  of  Atlantic  Water  between 
the  Tea  Seller  and  Tea  Purchaser.  —  When  Tea  can't  be  sweetened. 
—  Be-cause  as  a  Cause. 

WHOLE  reams  of  good,  white  paper  might  be 
consumed,    as   they  have  often  before    been 
used,  and  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the  manufac- 
turer thereof,  in  spreading  before  our  readers  the  vari- 
ous causes  of  the  American  Revolution. 

We  might  collect  from  dairies  North,  South,  East, 
and  West  enough  milk  and  water  to  float  entire  car- 
goes of  reasons  and  explanations  for  that  separation 
which  "  in  the  course  of  human  events  "  is  apt  to  take 
place  between  mothers,  even  good  ones,  and  daughters, 
and  which  is  not  usually  retarded  by  the  fact,  that  the 
mother  is  selfish,  looks  to  her  own  interest  exclusively, 
finds  fault  with  the  grown-up  girl,  and  -sterns  deter- 
mined to  get  all  the  work  out  of,  and  to  bestow  as  lit- 
tle as  possible  upon,  her ;  and  when  the  girl,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  pretty  high-spirited,  has  plenty  of  beaux, 


230    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

friends,  and  good  health,  and  a  nice,  comfortable  prop- 
erty of  her  own.  We  might,  we  repeat,  collect  all  this 
ocean  of  milk  and  water  together;  but  upon  taking 
counsel  of  our  own  experience,  we  have  concluded  to 
condense  this  troublesome  mass  into  a  few  panfuls  of 
cream,  which  will,  we  feel  sure,  contain  all  the  sub- 
stance, richness,  and  compressed  value  of  the  entire 
sea.  Skimming  over  the  wide  surface,  we  obtain, 
then,  these  creamy  globules,  the  round  causes  of  the 
American  Revolution. 

1st  Cause.  —  The  people,  —  the  causa  causa  us, — the 
yeast,  whose  fermentation  in  the  pots,  placed  in  vari- 
ous American  chimney-corners,  raised  off  their  lids 
and  opened  their  owners',  to  see  their  own  rights  and 
interests. 

2d  Cause.  —  George  "Washington,  Samuel  Adams, 
Patrick  Henry,  Benjamin  Franklin,  Thomas  Jefferson, 
Joseph  Warren,  John  Rutledge,  James  Otis,  Henry 
Laurens,  and  a  few  others,  without  whom  the  fermeut- 
ing-pots  might  have  "  run  to  emptyings." 

3d  Cause.  —  The  duties  vainly  sought  to  be  raised 
by  George  III.  from  the  colonists,  and  which  unex- 
pectedly raised  duties  in  them,  that  fitted  them,  not 
with,  but  to,  a  T. 

4th  Cause.  —  The  glimpses  obtained  during  those 
stolen  colonial  courtships,  in  1754,  1765,  and  1774, — 
those  sly  unions  at  Albany,  New  York,  and  Philadel- 
phia, —  of  the  fuller  blessings  and  happiness  of  "  a 
more  perfect  Union." 

5th  Cause.  —  The  identities  of  language,  interests, 
love  of  liberty,  capacities  for  legislation  and  home  con- 
trol throughout  the  various  Colonies,  and  the  felt  un- 


CAUSES  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION.    231 

wisdom  of  looking  three  thousand  miles  for  what  they 
could  better  find  at  home. 

6th  Cause.  —  George  III.,  Lord  North,  and  Charles 
Townshend. 

7th  Cause.  —  The  British  Navigation  Acts,  which 
prevented  American  navigation  and  dried  up  the  At- 
lantic for  American  bottoms. 

By  these  heavy  machines  the  seas  were  made  all  up 
hill  to  American,  and  easy  down  hill  for  English  ships. 

8th  Cause.  —  The  colonial  assemblies,  where  Ameri- 
cans learned  their  own  country  dances,  and  unlearned 
the  court  quadrilles. 

9th  Cause.  —  The  strong  Saxon  dislike  of  imposi- 
tions, which  had  accompanied  the  emigrants  hither  as 
a  principle,  and  was  always  kept  here,  both  principal 
and  interest. 

Wth  Cause.  —  That  little  Boston  tea-party,  and  the 
small  unpleasantness  at  Lexington. 

11th  Cause.  —  The  large  amount  of  Atlantic  water 
which  prevented  the  English  tea  seller  from  observing 
the  rights  of  the  American  tea  purchaser.  After  this 
discovery  of  English  near-sightedness,  the  expense  of 
sweetening  the  tea  to  make  it  acceptable  to  American 
palates,  even  when  the  cost  was  reduced  to  three- 
pence per  pound,  was  found  to  be  intolerable. 

Last  Cause.  —  Be-cause. 


BOOK    THIRD. 

THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

1775  TO  1789. 

"  L'Histoire  c'est  La  Revolution." 

MONTESQUIEU,  De  Petprit  des  Lois. 


CHAPTEE  I. 

THE  FIRST  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.      GRIEV- 
ANCES; THE  PREPARATION;  THE    START. 

The  Express  Train  of  the  American  Revolution.  —  The  Hard  Lot  of  the 
Colonists,  and  what  they  got  from  it.  —  Colonial  Governors,  like  Old 
Topers  at  a  Free  Opening  of  a  Tavern.  —  The  Miseries  of  a  Visit 
from  Relatives  poor  and  proud.  —  How,  like  poor  Fowls,  the  Navi- 
gation Acts  laid  many  bad  Eggs.  —  Examples  cited.  —  Parliament- 
ary Laws  ingeniously  floored  and  roofed.  *-  English  Strabismus,  or 
Squint-eyedness,  sought  to  be  made  Fashionable  in  the  Colonies.  — 
Success  in  Canada.  —  English  Tubs  to  catch  Revenue  off  American 
Slopes.  —  Manufacture  of  Hats  prohibited  ;  how  and  where  the  Fur 
flew.  —  What  a  Cute  Yankee  saw  from  the  Top  of  the  American  Roof. 

—  How  Four  Yards  are  worth  more  than  Five.  —  Bull-yism  defined, 
and  its  Laws  stated.  —  The  First  Bill  to  raise  Revenue  ;  the  large 
Bird  behind  it  described.  —  Sent  over  to  America,  it  was  foul-ly  treat- 
ed.—  Molasses  denied  to  Colonists.  —  Effects  on  Yankee  Appetites 
and  on  the  Increase  of  Straws  in  Custom-House  Casks.  —  Stamps  and 
Stampedes.  —  The  Act  repealed  ;  the  Sting  left  in.  —  Another  Bill  and 
larger  Bird  behind  it  in  1767.  —  The  First  Blood.  —  The  Wheel  starts  ; 
its  Hub,  Spokes,  and  Periphery.  —  English  Bees  swarm  over  and  settle 
in  Boston  and  other  tender  Parts.  —  The  Dis-cordant  Sounds  at  Con- 
cord. —  George  Washington  ;  his  Appearance  and  Costume,  and  what 
befell  him,  June,  1775.  —  Gage  falls  from  a  Tree.  —  Why  and  Howe  ? 

—  Washington  seizes  Boston  Neck.  —  The  Spasms.  —  Bunker  Hill  gets 
a  Scar  and  afterwards  an  Ugly  Monumental  Patch.  —  The  Boone  Col- 
onists in  Kentucky.  —  How  they  blazed  a-way  thither  from  Virginia. 

—  Washington  at  Cambridge.  —  Unseasoned  Troops  seasoned.  —  Gen- 
eral Montgomery  earns  Laurels  at  Quebec  mixed  with  Cypress. — 
The   Revolutionary  Wheel  throws  off  Dusty   Colonial  Governors. — 
How  Washington  broke  up  the  Hessian  Swarm  at  Boston,  and  Howe 
they  flew  to  Halifax.  —  Washington  attends  a  Lecture  in  Boston.  — 
General  Lee's  Neck-and-Neck  Race  with  Sir  Henry  Clinton  for  New 
York  ;  Lee  ahead  120  Minutes. —  Sir  Henry  and  a  Party  of  Jolly  Dogs 
alight  near  Charleston,  and  how  the  Waspish  Lee  lit  upon  and  stung 
them.  —  Where  the  Jolly  Dogs  then  went.  —  The  Wheel  well  started. 


236    THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 


THEEE  is  always  a 
strange   curiosity  to 


see  an  express-train 
go  by.  Everybody 
crowds  up  to  witness 
the  great  red  eye 
glare  and  scowl,  as 
if  it  resented  the 
=r^  safe  inspection  which 
those  on  the  platform 
give  it,  as  it  rushes 

FORCES  TEA  ox  HER  TROUBLE-  past.       Every     one, 
SOME  CHILD.  young  and  old, watch- 

es, with  concentrated 

interest,  the  momentarily  visible  heads  of  the  passen- 
gers, dusty,  dishevelled,  and  hot,  seen  through  the  pass- 
ing windows,  as  the  train  pants,  hurrying  around  a 
curve,  into  the  darkness.  Not  a  little  of  the  interest 
is  enhanced  by  the  feeling  that  it  will  bring  up  safely 
far  away  in  a  metropolitan  depot,  and  there  decant  its 
well-shaken,  effervescing  freight. 

So  stand  we,  surrounded  by  our  readers,  on  the 
platform  of  history,  to  see  the  American  Revolution 
rush  along  upon  its  own  way,  grim,  earnest,  resolute, 
tracking  its  onward  march  towards  the  great  end 
for  which  it  set  out. 

"  Le  genie,"  says  Buffon,  "  c'est  la  patience."  If  the 
naturalist's  definition  be  true,  the  colonial  patience 
constituted  a  most  remarkable  exhibition  of  genius. 

In  1763  the  greater  part  of  the  colonists  were  the 
descendants  of  men  who  had  escaped  from  hard  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  exactions  in  their  home  lands,  and 


FIRST   TURN   OF   THE   REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.     237 

had  set  up  for  themselves  in  an  unappropriated  field. 
From  this  new  lot  they  sought  to  extract,  by  the  dif- 
ficult labor  of  one  hand,  its  reluctant  yield  for  subsist- 
ence, and  by  the  other  to  keep  off  from  it  enemies 
ready  to  take  and  cut  their  crops.  Uninvited  pension- 
ers, called  Governors,  were  soon  sent  out,  in  showy 
tinsel,  to  tithe  their  laboriously  earned  products,  and 
to  fence  in  by  golden  bars  wrought  by  the  settlers 
the  royal  prerogatives  and  pretensions,  from  which 
those  settlers  had  endeavored  to  rid  themselves  by 
self-exile.  In  some  of  the  Colonies  mint  and  cummin 
were  extracted  for  a  church,  between  whose  ecclesias- 
tical detectives  and  themselves  they  had  essayed  to 
put  three  thousand  miles  of  disagreeable  pickle,  with 
rods  enough  in  it  to  terrify  even  lean  curates  with 
little  to  throw  up.  The  English  civil  list,  portioned 
off  upon  the  young  emigrants  in  the  shape  of  office- 
holders, sucked  up  —  like  an  old  toper  in  a  newly 
established  tavern  —  the  very  best  that  the  place 
afforded.  These  officials  thus  suffered  at  first  to  par- 
take of  the  generous,  open-house  entertainment,  soon 
cast  around  them  to  effect  a  permanent  claim  for  free 
commons,  wrhere  they  had  been  only  tolerated  by  an 
unselfish  hospitality.  As  no  one  likes  to  be  eaten  out 
or  evicted  from  his  own  house  and  home,  even  by 
assumed  and  softly  spoken  friends,  these  self-imposed 
guests  were  naturally  regarded  as  poor,  proud  relatives, 
who  came  unbidden  at  first,  put  on  company  airs,  in- 
sisted on  company  fare,  needed  extra  waiting  on,  bred 
disaffection  among  the  servants,  and  set  up  the  chil- 
dren to  fancies  beyond  the  parental  means  or  au- 
thority. 


238    THE   COMIC  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  Navigation  Acts,  to  which  we  have  already- 
adverted,  which  sought,  contrary  to  all  equity,  right,  or 
decency,  to  compel  the  poor  fugitives  from  plenty  and 
power  to  send  away  their  scanty  surplus  of  corn,  and 
to  get  what  few  things  they  needed  and  could  afford 
with  difficulty  to  procure,  oceanwise,  and  in  vessels 
exclusively  owned,  built,  manned,  and  officered  in 
England,  were  standing  grievances.  They  were  so 
hard  and  stiff,  that  every  one  ran  against  them,  and 
after  picking  himself  up,  looked  back  at  them  in  very 
bad  humor  and  with  adjectives  which  in  such  mo- 
ments some  utter,  but  which  types  refuse  to  immor- 
talize. 

Poor  fowls  breed  rapidly.  The  Navigation  Acts 
soon  laid  other  vicious  eggs.  On  the  restoration  of 
the  monarchy  in  the  person  of  Charles  II.,  in  1660,  the 
colonists  were  still  further  tied  up  by  an  act  which 
restricted  them  in  the  disposition  of  their  salable  prod- 
ucts to  England  alone,  —  a  very  desirable  thing  for 
English  purchasers,  but  deemed  by  the  pinched  colo- 
nists rather  rough  upon  them.  The  affectionate  step- 
children, however,  overlooked  this  selfishness  of  the 
cross-grained  old  step-mother,  and  clung  with  roman- 
tic attachment  to  the  dear  old  homestead,  from  which 
they  got  nothing  but  cheap  messages  of  cunning  en- 
dearment, in  return  for  the  substantial  contributions 
which  were  taken  back  in  the  Thames-built  clippers. 

These  acts  of  Parliament  were  of  course  floored 
with  thick,  wide  planking  of  well-jointed  terms,  and 
roofed  in  with  a  royal  signature,  which  in  English,  and 
especially  in  colonial  eyes  until  opened,  made  even 
thin  shingles  shine  like  stars ;  but  for  all  this  parlia- 


FIRST   TURN   OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.     239 

mentaiy  carpentering  the  gales  and  storms  of  real  life 
soughed  and  swept  in  through  the  clapboarding,  some- 
times chilling,  and  sometimes  wetting,  the  colonial 
tenants. 

Colonial  lands,  too,  were  given  away  as  loosely  and 
as  liberally  as  by  Congress  now;  then  to  royal,  as 
now  to  railroad,  favorites.  A  commercial  strabismus, 
or  English  squint-eyedness,  was  sought  to  be  made 
fashionable  in  the  North  American  communities,  just 
as  now  prevails  in  Canada,  —  an  apparent  look  at  their 
own  interests  in  one  direction,  while  in  fact  by  this 
crooked  optical  inversion,  the  eye  is  all  the  time  look- 
ing intently  in  quite  another  quarter.  That  direction 
was  of  course  northeastwardly  towards  those  little 
specks  of  islands,  that  were  left,  in  the  miscellaneous 
creation  of  things,  near  the  outer  rim  of  Europe,  and 
so  diminutive,  that  the  very  strain  to  discover  them 
behind  piles  of  parliamentary  selfishness  and  sup- 
ports, huge  stacks  of  manufactured  iron,  steel,  cotton, 
wool,  and  puffy  conceits,  was  sure  to  injure  the  sight 
and  at  last  to  produce  qualms  and  nausea. 

A  single  tub  will  catch  all  the  rain  that  falls  over  a 
very  wide  roofed  house,  if  the  gutters  are  rightly  ad- 
justed. The  little  tub  of  England  caught  all  the 
waters  that  ran  from  the  wide  American  slopes.  Then 
she  had  them  all  around  her.  She  has  many  still ;  an 
East  India  tub,  a  West  India  tub,  an  Australian  tub, 
etc.  The  bore  of  the  tubes  which  lead  to  these  are  not, 
perhaps,  as  great  now  as  formerly ;  but  now  the  waters 
are  distilled  before  they  are  sent  through,  and  so  run  a 
much  more  profitable  stream.  Of  course  she  labels 
them  all  with  very  fine  names,  "  Philanthropy,"  "  Free 


240     THK   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Trade,"  "Justice,"  etc.  It  matters  little,  however, 
what  the  name  is :  the  stuff  in  the  tub  is  of  the  same 
color,  a  buff  yellow,  and  of  the  same  metallic  ingredi- 
ents. 

Her  little  North  American  tub,  at  the  period  of 
which  we  speak,  was  continually  changing,  —  a  larger 
one  being  substituted  every  few  years,  as  new  gutters  * 
were  laid  down,  and  new  ways  found  to  enlarge  the 
water-sheds.  In  1732,  for  example,  the  colonists  were 
forbidden  to  sell  hats  to  each  other,  —  a  felt  grievance 
which  made  the  fur  fly  for  a  time ;  but,  as  usual,  it 
only  flew  from,  although  for,  England.  The  next  year, 
another  gutter  was  put  down  by  the  parliamentary 
tin-man.  Hatters  were  only  allowed  two  apprentices, 
—  a  provision  which,  although  very  merciful  now, 
considering  the  short  work  and  manners  and  very  long 
pay  of  employees, —  was  then  English  disinterestedness. 
A  few  years  later,  the  spirits  and  sweetening  of  the  col- 
onists were  taxed,  of  course  not  to  raise  the  former  nor 
increase  the  latter,  but  all  for  the  benefit  of  that  little 
Anglo-American  tub.  Manufactories  of  various  kinds 
were  prohibited  to  be  set  up,  the  profits  arising  from 
the  sales  in  America  of  the  articles  manufactured  in 
England  dripping  through  the  philanthropic  tubes 
into  the  tight  English  vat.  At  last  some  patriotic  and 
far-seeing  colonist,  getting  out  through  the  scuttle-  ' 
way  upon  the  wide  American  roof,  discovered  not  only 
pipes  leading  in  all  directions  over  it,  but,  on  looking 
sharply  around  with  a  half-prying  Yankee  curiosity, 
also  remarked  some  curiously  contrived  parliamentary 
ladders  of  rope,  hemp,  leather,  and  other  material, 
placed  on  the  rear  of  the  house,  and  cunningly  attached 


FIRST   TURN   OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.     241 

to  the  pipes  by  patented  clasps,  stamped  "  Eevenue  "  ;  so 
that,  by  an  arrangement  peculiarly  English,  and  in- 
vented by  some  benevolent  gentleman  over  there, 
an  official  friend  inside  could,  for  example,  cut  off  a 
yard  from  every  piece  five  yards  long,  or  take  out  two 
quarts  from  a  bushel  of  wheat,  or  a  pint  from  a  gallon 
of  molasses  or  sack,  and  pass  these  clippings  down  the 
back  ladders  and  so  off  home  to  England,  while  the 
colonists  were  meanwhile  entertained  by  an  argument, 
solidly  supported  by  figures,  and  looking  as  convincing 
as  a  six-barrelled  revolver  pointed  at  you,  to  prove 
that  there  was  no  loss  incurred,  but  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, it  was  the  very  way  to  make  the  remainder  more 
valuable. 

As  long  as  France  stayed  in  the  American  school- 
house  there  were  two  big,  full-grown  bullies,  whose 
mutual  jealousy  and  antagonism  were  the  best  protec- 
tion of  the  children  from  either ;  but  after  the  over- 
throw of  M.  Jean  Crapeau  in  1763,  Mr.  Bull  thought 
that  he  could  have  things  just  as  he  pleased,  could  sit 
down  where  he  liked,  in  such  gear  as  he  chose  to  make 
himself  comfortable  in,  —  shirt-sleeves  or  hunting-coat, 
muddy  or  indecently  short,  —  could  eat  up  any  one's 
lunch  if  he  fancied,  and  munch  the  choicest  fruit  that 
the  youngsters  were  keeping  for  their  own  use  at  play- 
time. And  so,  by  a  law  of  bullyism,  —  which  is  hu- 
man nature  ossified  by  success,  —  the  moment  of  the 
triumph  over  the  one  standing  champion,  was  the 
moment  when  the  intoxication  of  fancied  supreme 
power,  producing  a  vertigo  of  insolence,  brought  out 
around  the  object  of  the  championship  rivals  never 
before  suspected. 
11 


242      THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

In  a  word,  by  slow  and  painful  training,  the  Colo- 
nies had  become  their  own  champions. 

The  very  year  that  saw  the  treaty  of  peace  signed 
between  France  and  England,  by  which  the  former 
gave  up  all  her  American  possessions  east  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi, and  resigned  the  belt  of  North  America  to 
the  latter,  George  Grenville,  the  English  minister,  gave 
notice  that  he  should  introduce  into  Parliament  a  bill 
to  oblige  every  colonist,  who  used  in  any  way  receipts, 
notes,  drafts,  leases,  deeds,  mortgages,  or  any  such  crafty 
documents,  to  buy  from  the  British  government  and 
put  upon  them  stamps,  the  proceeds  of  which  sale  was 
to  be  spent,  of  course,  not  among  the  colonists  them- 
selves, but  in  England,  in  paying  the  national  debt  or 
in  some  other  facetious  way.  Of  course,  Americans 
did  not  object  to  stamps  in  themselves,  provided  they 
helped  to  make  or  to  hold  the  die  which  printed  them, 
and  had  a  hand  in  grooving  and  directing  the  chan- 
nels in  which  the  pay  for  them  should  flow.  But  they 
did  object  —  and  as  the  event  proved  most  sanguina- 
rily —  to  the  slicing  of  their  family  loaf  by  a  parlia- 
mentary knife  called  a  stamp  act,  sharpened  on  a 
London  stone,  and  whittling  off  their  living  even  with 
the  sparing  charity  of  the  Bull  family.  They  did  not 
think  it  either  safe  or  right  for  any  Taurian,  or  Teu- 
tonic, or  Gallic  chap,  however  gentlemanly  in  man- 
ners or  benevolent  in  professions,  to  be  trusted  in 
the  pantry,  there  to  use  to  any  extent  what  he  might 
find,  whether  articles  of  luxury,  as  pies  or  other  poi- 
sons, or  necessities,  as  bread,  butter,  cider,  or  other 
field  distillations. 

The  bill  of  Mr.  Grenville  was  a  little  one,  —  very 


FIRST   TURN   OF   THE  EEVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.     243 

small  and  very  timid,  —  but  there  was  a  bird  behind 
it,  as  large  as  all  the  English  crows  and  jackdaws  put 
together.  The  bird  was  not  introduced  until  the  next 
year,  1764,  when  it  was  tricked  off  with  some  bright 
beads  and  spangles  around  its  neck,  to  disguise  its 
genus.  But  many  in  England  discovered  immediately 
that  it  belonged  to  the  family  Falco  Britannicus,  the 
genuine  old-fashioned  British  falcon,  with  strong,  sharp 
claws  and  curved  short  bill  to  seize,  and  long,  powerful 
wings  to  bear  away  across  seas,  the  colonial  prey.  It 
is  a  bird  now  shot  at  by  every  philosophic,  well- 
charged  English  muzzle  whenever  it  makes  its  appear- 
ance ;  but  at  the  time  of  which  we  spe'ak  there  were 
public  game-keepers  of  the  Grenville  kind,  not  only  in 
England  but  in  other  countries,  who  believed  in  train- 
ing and  keeping  up  the  breed  of  parliamentary  or 
royal  falcons  for  colonial  and  also  for  home  service. 
These  well-fed  keepers  stoutly  maintained  that  it  was 
right  for  these  fowls,  deigning  to  leave  their  royal 
perches  in  Hesse  or  Hanover,  to  alight  for  their  royal 
pleasure  upon  private  barn-yards  and  in  granaries,  and 
that  the  people  were  proper  game  and  profitable  sport, 
and  should  even  feel  honored  by  the  eagle-like  visits. 
It  was  thought  best,  however,  by  the  English  hunts- 
man of  state  to  send  across  the  Atlantic  and  exhibit 
here  specimens  of  the  fowl.  Patrick  Henry,  Samuel 
Adams,  James  Otis,  Eichard  Henry  Lee,  and  others, 
well  acquainted  with  the  game  and  domestic  birds  of 
North  America,  at  once  pointed  out  and  denounced 
the  cruel  spurs  which  this  short-billed,  sharp-clawed 
British  falcon  wore.  Others,  if  possible  more  out- 
spoken, declared  their  opinion  that  this  bird  never 


244    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

could  be  domesticated  on  this  side  the  water,  but 
would  get  its  spurs  cut  away  and  perhaps  its  well- 
feathered  neck  wrung,  whenever  it  was  sent  over  for 
real  use  among  the  colonists. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  Bull  declared  that  the  colonists 
should  not  have  any  molasses  to  lick,  unless  he  him- 
self brought  it  and  sold  it  to  them.  Of  course  from 
that  time  forward  New  England  people  got  to  love 
molasses  with  patriotic  obstinacy,  and  above  all  things 
liked  to  tickle  it  with  a  straw  out  of  those  very  sol- 
emn-looking and  otherwise  forsaken  casks,  lying  in  the 
neglected  custom-houses  at  Boston,  Salem,  Newport, 
and  New  Haven. 

In  1765,  the  new  bird  was  brought  over  full-fledged, 
guarded  by  numerous  fowl-fanciers,  who  watched  it 
vigilantly  on  both  sides,  as  the  lion  and  unicorn  are 
represented  watching  the  British  crown.  But  as  usual, 
American  quickness  to  its  own  interests  was  quite 
equal  to  British  selfishness,  and,  ere  the  heavy  guar- 
dians could  turn  around  to  see  who  of  the  many  spec- 
tators was  teasing  and  worrying  the  bird,  his  feathers 
were  dreadfully  plucked,  and  the  poor  tning  left  with 
exposed  claws  and  crooked  bill  to  the  keen  ridicule  of 
the  by-standers. 

On  the  1st  of  November,  when  the  Stamp  Act  was 
to  go  into  effect,  most  of  the  bales  of  stamped  paper, 
kindly  sent  out  to  emblazon  colonial  writings,  had 
either  been  destroyed  or  shipped  back  to  their  parlia- 
mentary manufacturers.  Colonial  pluck  went  further. 
It  agreed  upon  total  abstinence  from  everything  for- 
eign-made, until  the  Stamp  Act  should  be  repealed. 
In  1766,  after  hot  debate,  the  Stamp  Act  was  repealed 


FIRST   TURN   OF   THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.     245 

by  the  British  Parliament ;  but  not  before  its  offen- 
sive sting  was  pulled  out  and  pettishly  thrown  across 
the  water  in  the  form  of  a  resolution,  declaring  the  right 
of  the  London  law  manufactory  to  tax  the  Colonies 
whenever  they  wanted  any  money. 

The  old  circumlocution  office  had  neither  learned 
how  to  do  it,  nor  how  graciously  or  gracefully  to  leave 
off  attempts  which  had  resulted  in  not  doing  it. 

During  the  year  following,  1767,  came  another  bill, 
with  a  still  larger  fowl  behind  it,  a  curious,  sleepy- 
eyed,  dove-colored  bird,  with  prehensile  claws  admi- 
rably sheathed  when  not  taking  hold,  but  very  strong 
when  its  real  strength  was  tested. 

This  bill  was  to  tax  glass,  paper,  painters'  colors,  and 
tea.  More  colonial  pluck,  —  more  total  abstinence,  — 
more  brisk  talk  between  governors  and  colonial  legis- 
latures, —  more  effervescing  revolutions  produced  by 
patriotic  acids  and  alkalies  stirred  by  newly  cut  sticks, 
—  more  courteous  shows  of  loyalty  and  equally  firm, 
resolute,  belligerent  acts. 

The  colonial  grievances  were  gathering  into  prepara- 
tions and  generating  motive-power  to  start  the  revolu- 
tionary wheel. 

At  Boston,  in  March,  1770,  the  first  blood  was  shed. 
The  ink  of  the  Boston  "  News-Letter,"  which  was 
still  published,  seemed  to  have  turned  red,  and  was 
beginning  to  be  let  out.  All  duties  were  now  re- 
pealed, except  those  on  tea.  The  old  sting  was  thus 
again  left,  and  the  colonial  face,  into  which  it  thrust 
its  tiny  hornet  spear,  began  to  swell  and  inflame. 

Preparations  were  now  made  to  drive  back  the 
English  bees  which  were  now  seen  to  come  over  in 


246    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

swarms,  and  to  settle  down  around  Boston  and  other 
tender  spots.  Congress  —  that  academy  of  celebrated 
American  state  doctors  —  was  called  for  in  Septem- 
ber, 1774,  to  apply  poultices  and  such  other  remedies 
as  they  deemed  best  to  the  inflamed  parts.  After 
much  consultation  together,  feeling  the  patient's  pulse 
and  testing  his  vitality,  they  became  convinced  that 
they  had  to  deal  with  one  of  those  surgical  cases 
which  are  quoted  often  afterwards  as  leading,  and  for 
the  successful  operation  in  which  careful  preparations 
must  be  made. 

The  military  revolutionary  wheel  was  at  length  set 
in  motion.  It  had  thirteen  spokes,  made  of  various 
kinds  of  wood,  all  unseasoned ;  but  they  were,  after  a 
little  patient  effort,  compactly  and  well  fitted  into  the 
hub.  A  patriotic  band,  put  around  its  periphery,  held 
the  wheel  together,  and  enabled  it  to  work  successfully 
many  years,  and  to  endure  the  strains  and  jars  of  colo- 
nial revolutionary  wagoning. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  first  formal  demonstration 
in  the  war,  was  the  despatch  by  the  British  com- 
mander, Gage,  April  18, 1775,  of  eight  hundred  men  to 
destroy  some  colonial  stores  at  Concord,  —  an  irruption 
into  the  very  temple  of  peace  itself.  At  Lexington, 
half-way  to  their  destination,  this  detachment  was  met 
by  some  seventy  provincial  volunteers,  who  entered  a 
bayonet  protest  against  this  breach  of  the  peace ;  but 
this  mild  protestation  was  answered  by  a  sharp,  crack- 
ling retort,  which  was  heard  all  through  the  Colonies. 
It  was  the  mot  de  resistance.  The  protesters  retired, 
and  the  detachment,  riding  eight  miles  further,  to  the 
fcmerson-ian  city,  scattered  the  ammunition  and  food 


FIRST 


TURN   OF   THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.  247 


-s 


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248    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

there,  and  rode  back  again  to  Boston,  being  quickened 
on  the  way  by  fowling-pieces  and  duck-guns,  dis- 
charged at  the  red-breasted  coveys.  On  hearing  the 
news  of  the  battle  of  Lexington,  Ethan  Allen,  gather- 
ing together  a  party  of  Green  Mountain  boys,  present- 
ed himself  on  the  evening  of  May  10,  1775,  before 
the  sleepy,  dozy  doors  of  Fort  Ticonderoga,  which 
were  knocked  open,  and  its  commandant,  De  La  Plaine, 
knocked  up  by  a  summons  to  surrender  in  the  name 
of  the  great  Jehovah  and  the  Continental  Congress. 
The  success  of  this  little  surprise  party  was  much 
talked  of,  and  raised  more  spirits  than  the  revenue 
acts. 

Within  Boston  all  of  Gage's  forces,  numbering 
three  thousand  English,  Scotch,  and  Irish  regulars, 
with  many  hired  Hessians  and  Waldeckers,  now  re- 
tired ;  while  twenty  thousand  very  irregulars,  farmers' 
boys,  and  mechanics,  with  John  Stark  in  his  bear-skin 
coat,  Israel  Putnam  in  leather  apron,  and  other  leaders, 
drawn  by  centripetal  patriotism  from  their  ill-supplied 
homes,  and  in  such  accoutrements  as  old  family  chests 
yielded  up,  assembled  in  a  tumultuous  crowd  at  the 
American  camp,  and  formed  a  weak  line  around  the 
land  side  of  the  city.  "While  this  cord  was  thus 
stretched  on  the  weak  side  of  Boston,  —  if,  indeed,  she 
ever  had  a  weak  side,  —  George  Washington,  then 
forty-three  years  old,  hitherto  pursuing  the  double 
business  of  farmer  and  surveyor,  overlaying  both  ever 
with  the  cultured  ease  and  polish  of  a  high-bred  gen- 
tleman, already  known  to  military  men  on  both  sides 
the  sea  by  his  practical  capacity  in  their  science, 
evinced  in  Braddock's  march  and  defeat,  confessedly 


FIRST   TURN   OF   THE   REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.     249 

a  large-headed,  well-balanced,  wise  man,  and  of  in- 
tense personal  courage  and  patriotism,  was,  on  the 
17th  June,  1775,  appointed  Commander-in-Chief.  No 
statelier  figure  than  his  —  over  six  feet  in  height  as  it 
was,  and  cased  ordinarily  in  large,  roomy  buckskin 
trousers,  a  handsomely  fitting  blue  coat  and  buff  vest 
—  was  seen  at  any  time  in  the  American  camp  for  the 
next  eight  years. 

About  the  same  time  the  British  troops  under  Gage 
were  reinforced,  until  they  counted  twelve  thousand 
veterans.  Gage,  however,  did  not  long  swing  on  the 
military  tree,  or  remain  to  be  shaken  from  the  Boston 
bough  by  the  Yankee  farmers  and  mechanics.  He  was 
superseded  by  Sir  William  Howe,  who,  in  a  few  days 
after  Washington's  appointment,  landed  at  Boston,  ac- 
companied by  Sir  Henry  Clinton  and  General  Bur- 
goyne. 

Believing  that  what  cometh  out  of  the  mouth  is 
more  hurtful  than  what  enters  it,  the  American  army 
now  seized  Boston  Neck  tightly.  This  contraction 
produced  some  spasms  in  the  apoplectic-looking,  newly 
arrived  Englishmen,  who  moved  galvanically  towards 
Bunker's  Hill,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  city.  To 
this  point  Colonel  Prescott,  with  one  thousand  men,  — 
including  some  negroes,  —  was  despatched  ;  and  here, 
as  is  well  known,  he  and  Warren  and  their  little 
party-colored  regiment  did  such  things,  June  17,  1775, 
to  General  Howe  and  his  three  thousand  attacking 
men,  reinforced  by  Clinton  during  the  day,  as  have 
been  deemed  worthy  of  much  speaking  about  ever 
since. 

The  brow  of  Bunker  Hill  received  that  day,  where 
"  11* 


250     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

Warren  and  others  fell,  a  scar  which  not  even  the  hard 
monumental  patch  since  imposed  upon  it  can  make  us 
wish  to  forget.  Higher  praise  of  that  scar  we  cannot 
accumulate. 

While  these  patriotic  doings  were  going  on  around 
Boston,  movements  equally  patriotic  were  pushed  for- 
ward in  an  entirely  new  quarter,  —  movements,  in  fact, 
which  resulted  in  hiring  the  coachman  of  the  Sun  to 
drive  for  the  future  an  American  emigrant  wagon- 
train,  in  company  with  the  old  Western  solar  line. 
Daniel  Boone,  then  in  his  forty-fifth  year,  having  four 
years  before  blazed  a- way  with  his  rifle  through  the 
woods  from  North  Carolina  across  the  Cumberland 
Mountains  to  the  river  of  the  same  name,  led  out  in 
May,  1775,  a  boon  company,  founding  a  Colony  on 
the  Kentucky  River,  at  first  called  Transylvania,  but 
which  subsequently  threw  off,  with  its  hunting-shirt, 
this  loog  Latinized  cognomen,  and  stood  at  the  dewy 
font  to  receive  the  dear  old  name  of  Kentucky.  The 
little  Colony  started  on  good  wholesome  diet,  —  relig- 
ious toleration;  representatives  elected  by  the  peo- 
ple, from  the  people,  for  the  people  ;  and  taxation 
only  by  their  own  representatives.  Sheltered  by  its 
seclusion  from  the  now  daily  swelling  insurrection 
on  the  Atlantic  coasts,  the  riflemen's  settlement  grew 
apace,  picking  up  its  flints  from  the  primeval  rocks 
which  propped  up  the  neighboring  Alleghany  range, 
but  pecking  them  for  use  only  upon  abundant  game 
that  hovered  over  its  dinner-pots  and  sauce-pans,  ready 
to  drop  into  them  at  proper  signals. 

In  July,  1775,  Washington  went  on  to  Cambridge 
and  took  charge  of  the  Continental  forces.  These 


FIBST  TUKN  OF  THE  REVOLBTIONAKY  WHEEL.          251 


252    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

forces  were,  it  is  well  known,  about  as  unmanageable 
as  those  at  work  in  volcanic  mountains,  sometimes 
making  an  ominous  rumbling,  sometimes  erupting 
awkwardly  for  the  peace  of  others  near  them,  and  oc- 
casionally discharging  themselves  most  inconveniently 
for  those  whose  duty  it  was  to  watch  them.  The  hot 
patriotic  principles,  however,  of  these  raw,  unscored 
militia  materials  helped  essentially  the  warm  endeav- 
ors of  Washington,  Gates,  Ward,  and  Lee  to  season 
them  into  tough  disciplined,  serviceable  timber,  and  so 
to  support  loads  and  resist  strains.  In  a  few  months 
even  the  most  unpromising  sticks  were  dry  enough  to 
be  piled  up  around  Boston,  and  thus  to  burn  out 
General  Howe. 

Following  the  old  colonial  habit  of  casting  sheep's- 
eyes  upon  Canada  whenever  the  dogs  of  war  were 
unkennelled,  that  shepherd  dog,  Ethan  Allen,  scented 
game  at  Crown  Point,  on  the  western  side  of  Lake 
Cham  plain.  Bounding  away  in  long  leaps,  without  a 
whine  or  a  howl  to  indicate  his  purpose  or  direction, 
he  suddenly  sprang  upon  the  British  flocks  quietly 
feeding  there,  and  effectually  penned  and  secured 
them.  Hardly  stopping  to  be  petted  for  this  exploit, 
the  brave  colly  tore  off,  with  only  a  small  pack  of 
eighty,  to  Montreal;  but  the  British  keepers  there, 
apprised  of  his  approach,  managed,  as  he  came  up 
near  the  folds,  to  seize  him,  put  a  collar  around  his 
neck,  and  to  send  him  to  England,  where,  however, 
he  never  would  hunt  with  the  royal  pack. 

General  Montgomery  was  more  fortunate ;  for 
within  a  month  after,  having  taken  St.  John's  and 
Fort  Chambly,  he  followed  the  footprints  of  Allen, 


FIRST   TURN   OF   THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.     253 

and  captured  Montreal.  Leaving  about  two  hundred 
troops  in  that  island  city,  —  now  the  crowning  jewel 
in  the  Anglo-American  stomacher,  —  he  pushed  down 
the  St.  Lawrence,  and  at  a  point  twenty  miles  above 
Quebec,  absorbing  the  detachment  of  six  hundred  men 
led  by  the  bold,  dashing,  unprincipled  Arnold,  he 
advanced  upon  the  citadel  of  English  America.  Here 
in  front  of  Quebec,  after  battling  the  cold  for  four 
weeks,  the  gallant  Irishman,  on  the  last  day  of  1775, 
amidst  a  storm  of  snow  and  of  pelting  iron  hail,  led 
on  a  vigorous  assault  against  the  place  where,  sixteen 
years  before,  in  company  with  the  brave  "Wolfe,  he  had 
gathered  the  bright  laurels  of  victory,  unmixed,  as 
was  not  his  commander's,  —  with  the  gloomy  cypress. 
Now  the  cypress  was  all  that  he  was  destined  to  grasp 
from  the  grim  rock  which  resented  a  second  capture 
by  the  same  mortal. 

He  fell,  however,  as  those  fall  who  do  more  than 
achieve  success,  —  deserving  it.  Under  the  portico  of 
St.  Paul's  Church,  in  the  city  of  New  York,  at  the  con- 
fluence of  those  pulsing  streams  of  life  which  surge 
down  Broadway  and  the  Bowery,  —  gathering  a  volume 
sufficiently  strong  to  overcome  the  heavy  whirlpools 
of  Wall  Street,  —  lie  what  of  Richard  Montgomery  was 
mortal,  borne  thither  sixty-three  years  after  his  death 
by  his  grateful  fellow-citizens,  who  have  laid  on  the 
island  of  Manhattan,  now  glittering  with  superb  edi- 
fices, no  corner-stone  nobler  or  more  imperishable  than 
that  which  they  then  deposited. 

The  Revolutionary  wheel  had  now  fairly  started, 
and  one  of  the  first  results  of  its  motion  was  the  shak- 
ing off  those  dusty  particles,  the  royal  governors,  — 


254    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

Dunmore,  in  Virginia ;  Lord  William  Campbell,  in 
South  Carolina ;  Sir  Joseph  Wright,  in  Georgia ;  and 
others,  —  each  of  whom,  measuring  his  own  weight  on 
his  own  scales,  fancied  —  as  we  now  can  read  in  their 
despatches  to  the  Colonial  Office  —  that  he  was  him- 
self a  stone  large  enough,  if  dropped  in  front  of  the 
wheel,  to  stop  forever  its  further  advance. 

The  Hessian  bees,  shaken  off  the  home  twigs  by 
their  owners,  the  fussy,  poverty-ridden  dukes,  princes, 
landgraves,  and  margraves,  swarmed  over  and  settled 
at  Boston  on  the  oaken  boughs  planted  there  by  Lord 
Howe.  George  Washington  was  determined  to  make 
a  vigorous  effort  to  break  up  the  hive  and  to  get  its 
military  honey.  In  March,  1776,  he  drew  near  to 
Boston,  sitting  down  on  Dorchester  Heights  with  an 
earth  curtain  before  him,  to  guard  against  the  stings 
of  any  vagrants  that  might  stray  away  from  the  main 
swarm.  Scarcely,  however,  had  our  general,  in  his 
buckskin  breeches,  begun  to  feel  around  the  nest, 
before,  to  his  great  surprise,  and  to  the  infinite  won- 
derment of  George  III.,  and  his  minister,  Lord  North, 
the  entire  swarm  with  a  peculiar  buzz,  rose  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  from  their  new-made  hive 
and  flew  away  in  a  bee-line  for  Halifax.  Much 
honey,  then  particularly  dear  to  Americans,  was 
gathered  after  they  left;  as  much  as  two  hundred 
and  fifty  combs,  in  the  shape  of  cannon,  and  not  a 
little  of  that  bee  dust,  so  very  scarce  in  March,  1776, 
called  powder.  Washington  was  much  concerned  lest 
the  pesky  swarm  might  turn  their  flight  and  settle 
down  in  New  York.  So,  after  attending  a  lecture  the 
night  following  his  entrance  into  Boston,  in  order  not 


FIRST   TURN   OF   THE   REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.     255 

to  excite  by  his  absence  any  hubbub  in  that  literary 
and  then  religious  place,  he  set  in  motion  the  great 
body  of  his  troops  towards  the  island  of  Manhattan. 

Major-General  Charles  Lee,  a  Welshman  by  birth, 
and  a  soldier  of  fortune,  who  had  fought  in  Portugal 
and  Poland,  mettlesome  and  waspish  in  temper,  was 
despatched  in  April  with  other  troops  to  New  York, 
where,  after  a  neck-and-neck  race  with  Sir  Henry 
Clinton,  accompanied  by  a  large  British  force  from 
England,  he  arrived  only  two  hours  before  his  com- 
petitor. Sir  Henry,  although  anxiously  expected  on 
shore  by  several  British  friends,  at  length  concluded 
that  it  was  too  early  in  the  season  to  alight  so  far 
north,  and  so  cruised  southward  for  a  milder  climate 
and  reception.  Sailing  leisurely  down  our  wave- 
dented  shores,  he  joined  the  squadron  of  his  old  boon 
companions  in  arms,  Admiral  Sir  Peter  Parker  and 
Earl  Cornwallis,  with  some  two  thousand  five  hundred 
jolly  dogs,  hired  at  fourpence  a  day  to  come  out  and 
inspect  our  country.  Strolling  on  together  pleasantly 
in  a  warm  latitude,  with  flying-fish  to  amuse  them  on 
the  outside,  and  broiled  fish  inside  the  ships,  they 
touched  land  at  last  near  Charleston.  The  restless, 
waspish  Lee,  who  had  been  also  flying  down  south- 
wards over  the  land,  hovering  on  quick  wing  and  watch- 
ing the  jolly  dogs  to  see  where  they  would  come 
ashore,  no  sooner  found  that  they  thought  of  landing 
at  Sullivan's  Island,  and  visiting  a  military  summer- 
house  there,  built  of  palmetto  wood,  and  called  Fort 
Moultrie,  than  he  lit  upon  them,  stung  two  hundred 
of  them  more  or  less  uncomfortably,  and  compelled 
them  all  to  go  off  wholly  from  that  place,  the  pleasure 


256    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

of  reaching  which  depends  so  much  upon  the  feelings 
of  those  to  whom  the  visit  is  proposed. 

New  England  and  the  South  were  now  alike  freed 
from  British  tourists  and  German  musket-holders. 

Where  Sir  Henry  and  his  jolly  dogs,  constituting 
one  party,  and  Lord  Howe  with  his  lively  squad,  still 
enjoying  themselves  at  Halifax  after  their  rapid  jour- 
ney from  Boston,  making  up  the  other  British  set, 
would  next  prospect,  much  concerned  the  Continental 
Congress,  George  Washington,  Charles  Lee,  and  the 
colonial  people  generally.  The  uncertainty  was  soon 
ended.  Lord  Howe,  sailing  from  Halifax,  June  llth, 
reached  Sandy  Hook  on  the  25th  of  the  same  month, 
and  dropping  anchor  off  Staten  Island,  July  2d, 
was  soon  joined  by  Sir  Henry  and  his  jolly  dogs, 
feeling  a  little  uneasy  of  stomach,  and  somewhat  less 
merry  than  when  they  left  England  nearly  three 
months  before,  and  vowing,  'pon  honor,  that  Sir  Henry 
had  somewhat  Jaken  them  in  at  Charleston,  although, 
in  fact,  the  real  trouble  was  that  he  had  not  taken 
them  in  at  all  there. 

Truly  the  Eevolutionary  wheel  was  now  well  started, 
and  began  to  get  in  earnest  motion. 


CHAPTEE  II. 

JULY  FOURTH,   1776,  AND  SO  FORTH. 

Review  of  our  Historical  Journey  from  the  Start  up  to  the  Summit  of  the 
4th  of  July.  —  Resume  of  our  Tramp  through  Pre-Columbian  and 
Post-Columbian  Times.  —  Our  March  from  St.  Augustine,  via  James- 
town and  the  Manhattan  Cabins,  to  the  Temperance  Tavern  at  Plym- 
outh. —  Descriptions  of  Indian  Interruptions.  —  Polite  Interferences 
of  Gallic  Gentlemen  at  Narrow  Parts  of  the  Road  in  1689,  1710,  1745, 
etc.  —  Banditti  on  the  Highways  of  History,  English,  French,  and 
Dutch.  —  Blazing  Description  of  the  Summit,  the  Flagstaff,  Flag,  and 
Eagle.  —  The  Grand  Political  Picnic  there  of  Fifty-one  Wise  Men.  — 
Tire  Thunder-Storms  around  them  ;  and  their  Behavior.  —  General 
Account  of  this  Group  ;  and  how  remarkable  and  marked.  —  Special 
Portraitures  of  Thirteen  of  them.  —  Some  Peculiar  Heads  there,  and 
how  much  George  III.  wanted  them.  —  Prayer  of  John  Adams.  —  A 
Great  Freshet  of  a  Speech  and  what  it  carried  off.  —  A  Remarkable 
Declaration  made  by  Jefferson.  —  An  ElectricaF  Battery  charged  and 
discharged.  —  The  Peppering  George  III.  got.  —  How  he  worked  Seven 
Years  against  the  Declaration.  —  The  Gunpowdery  Effect  of  the  first 
Fourth,  and  the  Fire- Crackers  since  touched  off  by  it.  —  Independence 
originally  handled  without  Gloves  ;  now  by  Aldermen  and  very  Com- 
mon Councilmen  with  a  half-dozen  Pair  apiece.  —  The  Fourths  up  to 
1850.  — Tar-Barrel  Eloquence.  — Military  and  Civic  Renown  snatched 
on  that  Day.  —  What  Eggs,  containing  Addling  Heroes,  pip  on  that 
Day.  —  How  Swords  embarrass  Crooked  Legs. — Militia  Lines,  and 
what  Snarls  they  get  into.  —  Dissolving  Bursts  of  Golden  Glories.  — 
Effects  of  Sulphur  administered  to  a  Rural  Population.  —  Cakes  of  Gin- 
gerbread, and  how  they  stuck  in  the  Teeth,  Stomach,  and  Memory. — 
Lamentations  over  the  Decay  of  the  Old-time  Fourths. 

LOXG  time  have  we  been  climbing  together  up 
the  political   eminence,   until  we   have  at  last 
reached  its  high  summit,  —  the  Fourth  of  July.     Cold 

Q 


258    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

and  bleak  was  the  weather,  and  wholly  new  and  un- 
cleared the  path  on  which  we  set  out,  thousands  of 
years  ago,  among  the  hitherto  unknown,  pre-Columbian 
regions  of  America.  The  way  was  beset  with  obstruc- 
tions, —  heaps  of  coal  and  fossil  remains,  —  and  strewn 
with  bones  of  races,  human  and  animal,  as  strange  even 
to  our  museums  as  they  were  novel  to  ourselves. 
Among  these  freshly  discovered  relics  of  our  great  an- 
cestors, we  trode  carefully,  and  lingered  with  pleased 
wonder  among  ruins,  which  shamed  by  their  age  and 
size  the  usurping  glories  of  Egyptian,  Chinese,  and  As- 
syrian antiquities.  At  last,  however,  having  traversed 
those  broad  plains,  over  which  hung  the  gray,  uncer- 
tain twilight  of  chronicle  and  geological  fiction,  we 
emerged,  by  a  sudden  turn  in  the  road,  into  the  clearer 
light  and  more  solid  undebatable  ground  rediscovered 
and  retouched  by  more  modern  nations  ;  convinced  by 
our  large  inspection  and  survey,  that  those  who  landed 
on  our  shores  long  before  Columbus  —  the  Cabots, 
Cortereals,  Verrazannis,  Vespuccis,  etc.  —  had,  like 
provident  patres  familias,  packed  carefully  away  large 
stores  of  carbonized  fuel  and  bone  manure  for  the  use 
of  those  who  should  come  behind  and  after  them,  and 
had  left  well-feathered  nests  for  the  more  helpless 
brood  which  might  flock  here  in  times  long  subsequent 
to  their  own. 

Refreshed  from  the  fatigues  of  this  long  wandering 
tramp,  we  then  took  a  fresh  start  304  years  ago  from 
Sainte  Augustine,  plodded  on  northwards  forty-eight 
years  to  Jamestown,  in  six  years  more  passed  the  little 
group  of  Dutch  cabins  on  Manhattan  island,  and  so, 
trending  off  eastward,  followed  the  wavy  coast  for  eight 


JULY  FOURTH,   1776,   AND   SO  FORTH. 


259 


THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

years  more,  until  we  brought  up,  in  1620,  at  the  newly 
erected  temperance  inn  at  Plymouth,  where  we  halted, 
glad  even  of  its  scant  and  unpromising  cheer.  Very 
early  after  leaving  the  James,  we  were  accosted  by  that 
well-known  wag,  J.ohn  Smith,  who  turned  up  in  high 
feather  with  Ppcahontas,  —  the  future  mother  of  Vir- 
ginia, — ^nd  who  keeps  turning  up  and  down  every- 
where in  all  humors,  moods,  and  tenses,  —  active,  pas- 
sive, transitive,  and  intransitive,  —  to  suit  and  amuse 
every  taste. 

Mile-stone  after  mile-stone  has  been  left  behind 
us.  We  have  been  hindered  by  Indian  ambushes 
along  the  wayside,  and  have  been  obliged  often  to 
pick  out  arrows  shot  into  our  covered  emigrant-wagon, 
as  we  have  toiled  up  and  over  the  New  England  hills, 
through  the  Mohawk  Valley,  and  along  the  broad 
bottom-lands  of  Virginia,  Georgia,  and  the  Carolinas. 
French  gentlemen  with  pleasant  manners  have  often 
stopped  us  at  cross-roads,  and  attempted  by  very  sharp 
arguments  to  convince  us  that  we  were  on  the  wrong 
track.  Several  large  parties  of  these  Gallic  gentle- 
men, at  various  narrow  parts  of  the  way,  especially  in 
1689,  1710,  1745,  and  notably  for  nine  consecutive 
years  from  1754  to  1763,  have  warned  us  back,  and  in- 
deed endeavored  to  turn  us  entirely  off  the  road,  claim- 
ing that  it  was  a  private  one  of  their  own.  But  past 
all  these  have  we  succeeded  in  pushing  our  historic 
journey,  shunning  the  miry  places  left  open  by  colo- 
nial negligence,  the  shaky  bridges  full  of  witch  holes, 
the  badly  mended  ruts  of  religious  bigotry,  and  the 
rough  patches  of  corduroy  posts,  laid  crosswise  over 
trembling,  low-lying  swamps  of  political  scheming  and 


JULY    FOURTH,    1776,   AND   SO   FORTH.  261 

financial  speculation.  Here  and  there  we  have  found 
bits  of  plank  road,  laboriously  and  ambitiously  placed 
over  the  public  highway  in  front  of  colleges,  school- 
houses,  churches,  and  occasionally  through  pleasant 
thrifty  villages. 

Now  and  then  we  have  ascended,  after  much  patient 
up-hill  work,  to  large,  noble  summits  of  civil  or  re- 
ligious freedom,  commanding  wide  horizons  and  broad 
views ;  but  often,  too,  have  we  felt  a  sinking  of  spir- 
its, a  saddening  depression,  as  we  have  been  compelled 
to  descend  to  lower  levels  and  to  jog  along  again  over 
wearisome  flats. 

We  have  been  detained  occasionally  by  civil-spoken 
English  governors  and  royal  councillors,  who  have  per- 
suaded us  to  alight  and  partake  of  their  cheer,  which, 
it  must  be  admitted,  was  much  better  than  that  which 
we  obtained  along  the  common  road ;  but  well  know- 
ing that  it  had  never  been  honestly  paid  for  or  justly 
earned,  we  should  have  found  it  more  palatable  had 
it  been  thus  properly  seasoned.  Landed  proprietors, 
with  smooth,  royal  manners,  have,  also,  sometimes 
stopped  us  to  state  little  points  of  difference  between 
themselves  and  their  North  American  tenants. 

Several  times  have  we  crossed  the  Atlantic  together 
for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  certain  information  about 
the  colonial  ways,  rights,  manners,  customs,  and  cos- 
tumes, which  could  only  be  cleared  up  by  papers 
which  had  been  either  accidentally  or  carelessly  left  be- 
hind, when  the  first  emigrants  packed  their  chests  with 
the  prime  necessaries  for  subsistence  on  their  briny 
journey.  As  we  returned  and  again  resumed  our  land" 
travels,  we  had  only  proceeded  a  short  distance  before 


262     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

we  were  stopped  by  unceremonious  and  hard-visaged 
European  highwaymen,  French,  Dutch,  and  English, 
with  whom  we  have  had  stout  fights,  to  prevent  the 
party  which  we  were  convoying  from  being  captured, 
plundered,  and  carried  off  to  foreign  lands.  But,  thanks 
to  a  kind  Providence  and  the  strong  arms  and  plucky 
vigor  of  the  brave  chaps  inside  the  wagon,  we  have  been 
able  to  disperse  these  banditti.  Two  of  them,  however, 
as  we  have  just  noted,  escaping  from  those  lesser  en- 
counters, entered  formally  into  a  set  contest  with  each 
other  for  the  championship  and  custody  of  our  his- 
torical party,  —  a  contest  which  came  off  a  few  rods 
from  the  top  of  the  hill,  and  which  we  halted  to  wit- 
ness. 

At  last,  however,  we  have  reached  the  summit  of 
the  great  pass,  —  the  high  beacon-point  of  American 
history,  —  where  the  sleepless,  vigilant  eagle  sits 
screaming,  while  his  strong,  horny  claws  grasp  the 
flag-staff,  from  whose  top  the  flag  of  the  married  em- 
pires is  anxiously  ready,  day  and  night,  to  slap  in  its 
saucy,  quarrelsome  face  every  wind  that  whispers  a 
provocation.  Here,  on  this  elevated  plateau,  we  come 
suddenly  upon  a  very  nice  party  of  picturesquely 
dressed,  intelligent,  earnest,  and  thoughtful  gentlemen, 
looking  like  a  large  gathering  of  state  midwives,  called 
together  to  consider  a  most  important,  impending 
family  event. 

Let  us  take  breath  for  a  few  moments  after  our 
long  ascent,  and  look  more  carefully  at  this  noteworthy 
group.  It  is  the  4th  of  July,  —  always  a  very  hot 
day ;  and  yet,  although  the  weather  is  characteristic, 
and  there  is  very  warm  work  ahead,  all  the  party  — 


JULY  FOURTH,   1776,   AND   SO   FORTH.  263 

numbering  that  day  fifty-one  persons  —  seem,  with 
few  exceptions,  to  be  very  cool  and  unheated.  They 
are  quite  unconcerned  about  the  thunder-storm,  sig- 
nalled by  white  caps  fringing  the  black  heads  which 
crowd  the  eastern  horizon  beyond  the  Atlantic,  and 
which  has  shaken  from  its  heavy  locks  leaden  pow- 
der, which  lias  sprinkled  the  exposed  plantations, 
Breed's  Hill,  Concord,  Lexington,  Ticonderoga,  Crown 
Point,  and  Long  Island,  and  even  shaken  its  disastrous 
dust  upon  Quebec  and  Montreal. 

This  notable  group  is  sometimes  called  the  Second 
Continental  Congress.  Remarkable  in  looks  and  marked 
men  are  nearly  all  of  the  persons  there  gathered, — 
remarkable  for  their  average  youth,  as  most  of  the 
members  became  equally  famous  for  great  age, — 
remarkable,  too,  in  a  majority  of  the  whole  number, 
for  handsome  features  and  intellectual  presence,  for 
their  aptitude  for,  and  ready  proficiency  in,  the  then 
very  mysterious  and  royal  business  of  statecraft,  law- 
making,  and  army-raising,  —  for  their  thoughtful  air 
and  high-bred  bearing,  and  their  readiness  in  argument, 
logic,  and  knowledge  of  human  rights  and  human  na- 
ture ;  marked  by  the  heavy  Hanoverian  displeasure  of 
George  III.,  of  the  aristocratic  Frederic,  Lord  North, 
his  minister,  and  of  Sir  William  Howe,  his  military 
generalissimo  in  the  Colonies.  Many  of  them,  too, 
were  marked  by  heads  so  peculiar  that  the  three  Eng- 
lish gentlemen  just  named  became  very  desirous  of 
having  them  to  put  into  the  English  State  Museum, 
and  even  went  so  far  as  to  offer  heavy  sterling  rewards 
for  any  one  who  would  secure  them. 

One  of  these  heads  immediately  arrests  our  atten- 


264    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

tion.  It  is  very  handsome,  and  is  set  upon  a  fine,  tall, 
gentlemanly  figure,  —  both  owned  by  one  John  Han- 
cock from  Boston,  only  thirty-nine  years  of  age,  of 
large  wealth  for  those  simple  days  honorably  acquired 
by  trade,  of  manners  conspicuously  high-bred,  and  with 
a  soul  that,  like  a  lamp  burning  inside  an  alabaster 
vase,  illuminates  the  beautiful  characters  which  the 
highest  culture  has  traced  and  wrought.  Two  years 
ago,  when  Boston  was  patiently  biding  the  expected 
period  of  English  justice,  triumphing  over  a  short- 
sighted selfishness,  and  was  carrying,  as  best  she  might, 
meanwhile,  the  cruel  burdens  of  the  Boston  Port  Bill, 
and  when  General  Gage  was  sent  out  to  see  that  she 
did  not  cut  the  straps,  shift  the  load,  or  escape  its 
grievous  weight,  John  Hancock,  —  who  the  evening 
before  had  rallied  with  soul-lifting  eloquence  his 
fellow-sufferers  at  Faneuil  Hall  to  the  unjustly  imposed 
duty  of  throwing  off  the  crushing  load,  —  rode  at  the 
head  of  his  Boston  Cadets,  to  bear  with  restrained 
courtesy  from  the  Long  Wharf  to  the  State  House  this 
hard  plum  from  the  royal  enclosure,  —  a  Gage  that  he 
was  careful  not  to  pluck,  but  to  preserve  until  it  was 
fully  ripe.  Among  this  group  he  sits  on  a  raised  seat, 
and  acts  as  president. 

A  few  gentlemen,  more  advanced  in  years  than  the 
rest,  are  sprinkled  through  the  company.  One,  an 
old  acquaintance  of  ours,  the  boy  who  in  1721  fur- 
nished through  the  "  New  England  Courant "  such 
strong  food  for  even  Boston,  and  afterwards  set  up  an 
intellectual  bakery  at  Philadelphia,  now  seventy  years 
old,  rests  his  massive  benevolent  figure  in  a  chair  made 
comfortable  by  his  presence,  —  his  broad  mild  face,  so 


JULY   FOURTH,   1776,  AND   SO  FORTH.  265 

largely  serene,  framed  in  by  flowing  soft  locks,  and 
beaming  with  a  placid  composure,  as  if  the  plough- 
share of  hard  work  had  not  turned  a  furrow  there.  He 
looks  as  if  he  could  forgive  George  III.  for  his  narrow 
notions,  wedged  inextricably  fast  in  his  narrow  brain, 
and  even  his.  sallow,  bilious,  meadow-bottomed,  Hano- 
verian dulness,  dripping  in  pestilent,  unhealthy  oozings 
through  his  slow  liver  into  his  slower  understanding. 
"Well  does  the  serenely  fronted  old  sage  know  all  the 
importance  and  the  character  of  the  business  in  hand. 
His  clear,  philosophic  mind  has  weighed  in  its  calm 
well-adjusted  balances  the  questions  now  to  be  de- 
cided. He  has  but  lately  escaped  from  England, 
where,  as  agent  for  the  Colonies,  he  was  watched  and 
treated  by  the  government  with  incised  and  rigorous 
dislike ;  yet,  as  a  man  and  thinker,  he  was  there  wel- 
comed by  the  best  men  and  most  advanced  statesmen. 
With  Pitt,  Camden,  Burke,  Charles  James  Fox,  and 
even  Lord  North,  he  met,  and  with  calm,  compact,  sensi- 
ble, logical  eloquence  discussed  the  nature  of  the  prin- 
ciples, alike  dangerous  in  England  as  in  the  Colonies, 
which  the  Ministry,  in  the  name  of  the  former,  were 
seeking  to  fasten,  as  the  shirt  of  Nessus,  upon  the  lat- 
ter. While  on  his  ungracious  mission,  he  had,  also, 
encountered  that  ponderous,  fact-clad,  political  Goliath, 
Samuel  Johnson,  who  had  lately  stepped  forth  in  front 
of  the  ministerial  Philistines,  and  defied  .any  one  to 
prove  that  taxation  of  a  people  unrepresented  was 
tyranny.  In  that  encounter,  the  American,  armed 
only  with  a  simple  Quaker  sling,  planted  in  the  giant's 
head  a  stone  harder  even  than  itself,  and  very  uncom- 
fortable therein.  Few  now  were  Franklin's  words ;  but 
12 


266     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

each  one  weighed  ten  pounds,  and  though  perhaps 
homely  in  shape  and  unrounded  at  the  angles,  when 
hurled  out  by  an  honest  heart-force,  they  crashed  resist- 
lessly  through  all  the  fences  and  thickets  of  sophis- 
try or  learned  show. 

Having  to  manage  those  two  difficult  problems  in 
the  political  economy  which  then  crowded  up  for  solu- 
tion, namely,  how  to  raise  a  revenue  out  of  2,800,000 
poor  colonists,  which,  in  weight,  should  put  it  in  equi- 
poise with  the  heavy  stacks  of  English  pounds  ster- 
ling ;  and  how  to  make  7,754  soldiers,  constituting, 
as  Washington  had  that  very  morning  reported  from 
head-quarters,  the  entire  colonial  army,  successfully 
oppose  28,000  English  and  17,000  Hessian  troops, 
this  American  Witenagemote  had  conscious  need  of  all 
poor  Eichard's  solid,  homespun  sense  and  wise-headed 
prudence  and  resource.  But  the  grand  old  man,  who 
by  virtuous  kiting  had  obtained  naturally  lightning 
out  of  heaven  by  an  easy  discount,  was  equal  to  the 
task  of  drawing  credit  out  of  the  well-soiled  banks  of 
his  country.  On  a  ring,  circling  his  forefinger,  and 
given  him  by  an  ardent  friend,  one  may  —  by  a  near 
inspection,  when  the  large  head  leans  against  his  right 
hand  —  see  carved  that  motto,  which  is  his  condensed 
biography, 

"  Eripuit  coelo  fulmen,  sceptrumque  tyrannis." 

A  little  way  off  stands  a  tall,  scholarly  figure,  care- 
fully dressed  in  the  gentlemanly  costume  of  that  time, 
a  blue  coat  faced  with  yellow,  a  scarlet  waistcoat  para- 
graphing an  elaborate  shirt-frill,  and  black  broadcloth 
tights,  clasped  at  the  knee,  and,  like  his  own  round 


JULY  FOURTH,   1776,  AND   SO  FORTH.  267 

periods,  closed  by  polished  silver-tongued  buckles.  He 
is  thirty-one  years  old.  His  brick-colored  hair  and 
sanguine  complexion  betoken  his  ardent  temperament. 
His  faultless  dress  and  stainless  linen  betray  a  deli- 
cacy and  refinement  of  culture  and  taste,  in  which  he 
had  few  peers  in  his  time  on  either  side  the  Atlantic. 
This  is  Thomas  Jefferson.  Chairman  of  a  committee 
to  report  on  the  question  of  the  right  of  the  Colonies 
to  be  hereafter  independent  of  Great  Britain,  he  holds 
in  his  womanly-shaped  hands  a  large  manuscript  writ- 
ten in  neat,  careful  characters. 

Close  to  him  stands  the  short,  firm,  square,  con- 
densed-looking figure  of  John  Adams,  coaxed  into  a 
well-ripened  fulness.  He  is  ten  years  older  than  Jef- 
ferson ;  destined  to  be  his  generous  rival  through  an 
eventful  life,  and  to  die  only  a  few  hours  after  him,  just 
fifty  years  from  that  time,  and  on  the  semi-centennial 
anniversary  of  that  very  day.  There  is  a  good-natured 
frankness,  in  his  round,  generously  blooded  face,  and 
full- veined  forehead ;  great  firmness  in  his  well-pressed 
lips ;  and  about  his  massive  head  a  solid,  intellectual 
strength  that  have  already  well  earned  for  him  the 
appellation  of  "  the  column  of  Congress."  A  hot  pur- 
pose shows  in  his  pink-heightening  complexion,  flush- 
ing it  with  an  auroral  light  which  plays  and  flashes  up 
to  the  very  zenith  of  his  head.  Faults  he  has,  like  his 
rival,  grievous  and  many ;  but  among  them  is  not  that 
of  being  indifferent  to  his  country  or  her  freedom. 

A  little  way  off  sits  one  of  the  most  accomplished 
orators  in  all  that  gifted  group ;  a  genial  companion  you 
may  see  he  is  at  a  glance.  He  is  a  ripe  scholar,  edu- 
cated in  an  English  university,  and  yet  warm  with  a 


268     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

loving  nature  that  glows  on  his  face  and  through  his 
graceful  discourse.  Wielding  a  ready  pen,  whose  vigor- 
ous strokes  have  already,  in  the  Memorial  of  Congress 
to  British  America,  cleft  the  unwilling  hearts  of  Cana- 
dians, and,  in  The  Address  of  Congress  to  the  People 
of  Great  Britain,  have  imbedded  forever  in  the  English 
Constitution  the  principles  of  representation  as  the 
basis  of  taxation,  Eichard  Henry  Lee,  from  South  Caro- 
lina, three  years  older  than  Adams,  sits  there  in  cul- 
tured ease  and  thoughtful  dignity,  a  model  legislator. 
In  the  preceding  month  of  June  he  had  moved  a  reso- 
lution, asserting  the  rights  of  the  Colonies  to  be  free, 
and  to  dissolve  in  brine  the  ligaments  which  wickedly 
tied  them  to  the  money -making  law  manufactory  at 
home.  This  resolution,  having  of  course  been  well 
debated  when  it  came  up  for  consideration  three  days 
ago,  —  for  American  Congresses  were  never  deaf  or 
dumb  asylums,  —  had  been  adopted,  and  upon  it  a 
committee  raised,  whose  report,  drawn  by  Jefferson, 
and  revised  by  Franklin  and  Adams,  is  to  be  read  in 
to-day's  session. 

A  few  feet  away  are  Edward  Eutledge  of  South 
Carolina,  who,  although  only  in  his  twenty-third  sum- 
mer, is  laden  with  the  sheaves  of  a  rich  harvest  of 
oratorical  fame  ;  Charles  Carroll  of  Maryland,  who,  an- 
nexing to  the  Declaration  his  address,  so  that  he  might 
not  be  passed  by  the  state  executioner  for  his  treason, 
was  spared  by  death  to  be  the  last  of  that  memorable 
party  on  earth  ;  Elbridge  Gerry  of  Massachusetts,  who 
lived  to  fill  acceptably  every  honorable  office  known  to 
our  system  of  government,  except  that  of  President ; 
and  Eobert  E.  Livingston  of  New  York,  who  survived 


JULY   FOURTH,   177C,   AND   SO   FORTH.  269 

the  recordership  of  the  city  of  New  York,  and  became 
eminent,  not  only  in  many  fields,  but  notably  on  the 
Hudson  River,  in  connection  with  Robert  Fulton's  ef- 
forts to  subject  water  to  steam,  —  not  one  of  them, 
except  Carroll,  yet  thirty-three  years  of  age. 

Leaning  forward  and  near  this  last  group  stands  the 
bulky  figure  of  one  who  was  for  the  first  twenty-two 
years  of  his  life  a  shoemaker;  but  who,  disregarding 
the  maxim  of  Horace  "  to  stick  to  the  last,"  left  the 
lapstone  to  attend  to  the  understandings  of  his  suf- 
fering countrymen.  This,  all  know,  is  Roger  Sherman 
of  Connecticut,  true  to  independence  and  well-grounded 
freedom  —  to  the  last. 

Across  the  room  stand  talking  together  George 
Wythe  of  Virginia,  sweet-tempered,  frolicsome  as  a 
boy,  yet  resolute  of  purpose,  able  in  debate,  and  capa- 
ble of  deep  research ;  Robert  Morris  of  Pennsylvania, 
born  in  England,  an  emigrant  to  Philadelphia  in  his 
thirteenth  year,  whose  nature  of  sterling  British  oak, 
seasoned  in  the  counting-house  of  Charles  Willing,  and 

o  •        t>? 

whose  solid  aptitudes,  hardened  into  financial  wisdom, 
were  now  so  much  needed  in  the  new  political  part- 
nership of  States ;  and  Joseph  Reed  from  the  same 
State,  whose  sturdy,  honest  face  seems  to  light  up  a 
large  space  all  around  him,  and  whose  rebuke  two 
years  later  to  the  commissioner  of  Lord  North,  who 
sought  to  bribe  him,  that  "  poor  as  he  was,  the  king  of 
Great  Britiari  was  not  rich  enough  to  buy  him,"  raised 
American  securities  as  high  in  Europe  as  the  practical 
answers  of  some  of  his  congressional  successors  to 
similar  attempts  on  their  financial  virtue  by  North  or 
South,  East  or  West,  have  depressed  them. 


270     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Others  there  are  among  those  twoscore  and  eleven 
whom  we  should  be  glad  to  delineate,  as  we  dearly 
love  to  look  at  them  gathered  in  the  morning  light  of 
that  first  Fourth  of  July ;  but  there  is  such  a  serious, 
thoughtful  air,  such  a  felt  pressure  weighting  all  brows 
and  hearts,  that  the  loaded  hour  presses  down  and 
hushes  all  such  light  thoughts.  A  prayer  so  simple, 
earnest,  child-like,  and  trusting,  —  uttered  amid  im- 
pressive silence  by  John  Adams,  —  that  it  seems  to 
bear  the  great  question  up  to  the  Great  Heart,  hushes 
the  assembly  to  a  balanced  calm,  and  opens  the  busi- 
ness. 

Large  sealed  packages  from  "Washington,  brought  on 
horseback  all  the  way  from  New  York,  are  then  read. 
They  speak  of  his  few  men,  —  most  of  them  without 
arms,  clothing,  or  food,  —  in  presence  of  45,000  fresh 
and  well-supplied  English  and  German  troops,  under 
the  command  of  Lord  Howe,  of  his  brother  the  Ad- 
miral, and  of  Sir  Henry  Clinton.  Other  letters  were 
read  from  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Maryland,  and 
New  York,  urging  the  wise  men  to  declare  the  old,  un- 
equal partnership  with  England  at  an  end,  —  a  part- 
nership to  which,  they  felt,  that  the  colonial  partners 
had  furnished  the  capital  and  labor,  and  from  which 
the  English  associates  drew  all  the  profits. 

In  the  name  of  the  Profit,  they  virtually  said,  war. 
Then  followed  a  pause  in  the  proceedings,  which  at 
length  the  full,  firm  voice  of  John  Adams  broke.  His 
speech,  rising  and  rising  like  a  freshet  over  that  tall 
occasion,  swept  away  by  its  resistless  logical  momen- 
tum the  forces  of  sophism,  carried  in  its  strong  hurry 
all  the  impediments  to  its  march,  brimmed  over  with 


JULY   FOURTH,   1776,   AND   SO   FORTH.  271 

its  swelling  forces  the  whole  territory  of  debate,  until 
at  last,  the  gathered  mass,  hurled  full  against  the 
barriers  of  prejudice,  conservatism,  doubt,  and  fear, 
prostrated  forever  the  props  and  supports  of  British 
usurpation  in  the  Colonies.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that 
no  reporters  were  present  to  take  down  or  even  out- 
line this  speech.  Gathered  up,  however,  from  tradi- 
tion and  memory  by  Daniel  Webster,  about  half  a  cen- 
tury afterwards,  it  has  floated  and  collected  in  almost 
every  school-house  and  college,  and  there  formed  ed- 
dies, whirlpools,  and  geysers,  which  have  sucked  in 
and  spouted  out  much  gyrating  declamation. 

Other  speakers  followed  the  fiery  Adams,  most  urg- 
ing, a  few  deprecating,  immediate  action.  We  need 
not  note  here  their  range,  fire,  or  effect. 

At  last  the  patriotic  battle  abates ;  and  the  com- 
mittee of  five,  —  Jefferson,  Adams,  Franklin,  Sherman, 
and  Livingston,  — forming  around  the  tall,  dignified, 
picturesque  figure  of  their  chairman,  advance  in  front 
of  the  president's  seat.  There  is  an  expectant,  oppres- 
sive hush,  a  sudden  settling  back  into  seats ;  and  all 
eyes,  like  sunflowers,  turn  towards  the  scarlet-waist- 
coated  son  of  the  Bevolution.  The  neatly  written  pa- 
per is  slowly  unrolled,  and  its  weighty  truths,  crowding 
up  to  its  very  rim,  begin  at  once  to  discharge  them- 
selves. 

That  large  electrical  battery  has  been  ever  since  at 
work,  charging  nationalities  and  peoples,  galvanizing 
the  feeble  to  effort,  producing  sparks  whenever  the 
current  has  been  interrupted,  recovering  back  to  vital 
action  sick  communities,  and  arousing  to  better  health 
from  that  hopeless  despair  which  a  long  course  of 


272     THE   COMIC  HISTOKY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

royal  quack  doctoring  had  produced,  constitutions,  sys- 
tems, or  states  originally  strong,  energetic,  and  vigorous. 
Without  analyzing  or  dwelling  upon  the  full,  electrical 
streams  then  and  there  evolved  by  that  American  inde- 
pendence machine,  we  will  only  record  here  that  two 
principal  jets,  namely,  that  of  the  equality  of  all  in 
their  creation,  and  the  other,  that  all  governments 
rest  solely  upon  the  consent  of  the  governed,  have 
poured  upon  paralyzed  and  crippled  humanity  such  a 
current  of  blessings,  that  the  old  Asiatic,  African,  and 
European  practices  of  blood-letting  for  liberal  pleth- 
ora, drugs  for  congested  rights,  anodynes  for  con- 
sciences politically  discontented,  and  cathartics  for 
purging  away  healthy  food  necessary  for  civil  nutri- 
tion, are  fast  becoming  unpopular. 

George  III.  got  a  terrible  peppering  from  that  ma- 
chine ;  but  as  he  lived  forty-four  years  afterwards,  it  is 
fair  to  presume  that  his  royal,  burly  Hanoverian  person, 
rolling  over  and  over  in  bucolic  clover,  repaired  with- 
out difficulty  dents  and  shocks  caused  by  applications 
administered  at  such  a  distance.  For  seven  years  fol- 
lowing he  was  in  a  great  state  of  irritation,  and  worked 
hard  to  prevent  the  results  with  which  that  Declara- 
tion concluded,  namely,  a  determination  to  cut  all 
connection  with  him  and  his  little  island  ways. 

How  this  great  struggle,  thus  earnestly  begun,  was 
carried  on,  and  its  final  issue,  must  be  the  office  of 
future  chapters  to  tell. 

That  first  Fourth  caused  a  very  gunpowdery  smell 
throughout  the  Colonies  for  seven  succeeding  years, 
and  has  touched  off  more  fire-crackers  since  than 
would  fence  in  China  with  a  wall  higher  than  its 
present  one. 


JULY   FOURTH,   1776,   AND   SO  FORTH.  273 

The  lever  then  thrust  beneath  the  corner-stone  of 
civil  right,  to  pry  it  out  of  its  undisturbed  imbedment 
into  its  appropriate  place,  was  handled  by  ungloved 
hands ;  but  the  anniversary  of  the  event  itself  cannot 
be  now  handled  by  the  municipal  jollifiers  in  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  Boston,  New  Orleans,  and  even 
Chicago,  with  less  than  six  pairs  of  gloves  each,  while 
the  very  common  couucilinen  sometimes  get  twelve 
pairs  apiece  for  the  occasion. 

Blessings  on  all  the  Fourth  of  Julys  up  to  1850  ! 
What  occasions  for  tar-barrel  eloquence,  going  off  into 
flaming  tropes  and  figures,  have  they  not  been  !  That 
has  not  only  been  "  the  birthday  of  freedom,"  but  the 
natal  initiation  into  civic  or  military  renown  of  many 
a  village  tyro.  The  shoemaker,  blacksmith,  or  carpen- 
ter, smothered  for  three  hundred  and  sixty-four  days 
under  his  own  waxed  ends,  cindery  veneering,  or  plane 
modesties,  has  suddenly,  on  that  prolific  day,  been  so 
brought  out  on  a  prancing  horse,  or  caught  such  a  gleam 
from  his  well-scoured  sword,  resting  on  his  trusty  thigh, 
or  left  to  play  loose  between  his  crooked  legs,  as  to 
aspire  to  be  road-master,  town-reeve,  supervisor  of  the 
county,  assemblyman,  representative  in  Congress,  and 
even  United  States  senator. 

The  civic  honor  of  presiding  at  the  old-time  tradi- 
tional public  dinner,  which  crowned,  at  the  principal 
tavern,  the  militia  morning  cantering  and  inexpli- 
cable twistings  of  crooked  military  lines,  —  lines  that 
snarled  up  until  they  broke  past  all  sewing  by  waxed 
ends,  welding  by  cindered  hands,  or  splicing  by  plane 
people,  —  has  again  and  again  pipped  the  egg,  else  in- 
gloriously  addling,  which  enclosed  the  rudimentary 
12*  B 


274    THE   COMIC  HISTORY  OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

germ  of  a  railroad  president,  it  may  be  even,  of  a  con- 
ductor with  diamond  pin,  gold  finger-ring,  largely  accu- 
mulating real  estate,  and  all  the  other  incidents.  These 
glorious  dinners  have  been,  also,  the  nurseries  of  the 
legal  profession,  whose  young  members  have  thence 
sent  up  whizzing  sky-rockets,  which,  mounting  and 
mounting  on  the  straining  enthusiastic  eye,  have  burst 
into  such  dissolving  showers  of  golden  glory,  that,  by 
the  unexpected  explosion,  the  national  horizon  and 
their  own  have  been  widened  on  all  sides,  and  new 
stars  been  stuck  into  its  astonished  vault. 

We  pity  the  American  who  has  been  born  into  our 
degenerating  times,  which  neglect  those  primitive  occa- 
sions of  cheap  yet  great  renown,  when  a  little  sulphur, 
administered  to  a  rural  population,  went  further  to 
cure  all  the  scarlet  fever  of  the  neighborhood  than  all 
the  colic-producing  iron  pills  of  actual  war.  We  com- 
miserate the  condition  of  the  young  American,  grown 
so  apoplectic  ere  he  arrives  of  age,  by  the  prodigal  dis- 
play of  bunting,  fire-works,  and  red-faced  oratory  at 
our  frequent  elections,  that  he  disdains  the  frugal  but 
satisfying  cakes  of  gingerbread,  then  bought  with  a 
well-pressed  sixpence  from  the  calico-roofed  booth  on 
the  side  of  the  bars,  through  which  those  undulating 
militia  lines  managed  to  unwind  without  hanging  on 
the  fence  or  getting  into  puzzling  knots. 

Gone  now  are  those  molasses-plated  cards  of  cake, 
pleasant  to  the  taste  on  the  Fourth,  and  sticking  to  the 
teeth,  stomach,  and  memory  of  the  patriotic  eater  for 
at  least  one  fifty-second  part  of  a  year.  Gone  now 
are  the  pranks  of  horses  bestridden  by  the  colonel  or 
major  of  the  regiment,  —  his  first  equestrian  perform- 


JULY  FOURTH,   1776,   AND   SO   FORTH.  275 

ance  freely  exhibited,  and  in  which  he  showed  feats, 
entirely  his  own,  which  could  not,  or  at  least  would 
not,  be  displayed  by  first-class  circuses  or  turf-bred 
racers,  who,  skimmed  over  in  blue,  yellow,  or  green, 
glide  so  stunningly  through  the  admiring  and  open- 
ing air.  Vanished  .  now,  alas !  are  the  groups  of  in- 
nocent children  waiting  for  the  show  of  animals,  not 
those  on  parade,  but  the  lively  monkeys,  the  pie- 
colored  horses,  and  the  wonderful  clown,  whose  pho- 
tographs, loading  down  the  staggering  fences,  black- 
smith-shop, horse-shed,  and  post-office  for  a  whole  long 
fortnight,  were  all  so  well  known  to  them  before  the 
originals  striped  the  village  with  their  many-colored 
glories. 

Gone  glimmering  away  from  this  green-backed  epoch 
are  the  sable  groups  that  danced  on  the  greensward, 
away  from  the  tangling  military  lines ;  apparently  just 
as  happy  as  if  the  American  Wittenagemote,  led  on 
by  Jefferson,  Adams,  Franklin,  Sherman,  and  Living- 
ston, had  not  solemnly  declared,  and  thereto  pledged 
all  that  they  had,  "  that  all  men  are  created  free  and 
equal." 


276    THE   COMIC  HISTOKY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 


CHAPTEE   III. 

SECOND    TURN    OF   THE    REVOLUTIONARY    WHEEL  ;    ITS 
ECCENTRIC    BUT    ONWARD    MOVEMENTS. 

1776-1780. 

English  Hawks  gather  around  New  York. — Washington  watches  them.  — 
About  an  Esquire.  —  The  Way  the  Germans  took  Brooklyn  the  first 
Time.  —  How  they  returned,  not  to  their  Mutton,  but  to  Kalbfleisch. 
—  Difficulty  of  reaching  New  York  from  Brooklyn  in  1776.  —  Wash- 
ington takes  a  Trip  to  Harlem.  —  The  British  also.  —  Red  Eyes  and  Dis- 
figured Faces  the  Consequence.  —  Lord  Howe  attempts  to  get  around 
the  American  Squire.  —  The  slight  Unpleasantness  at  White  Plains.  — 
The  different  Uses  of  the  Croton  Water  in  1776  and  now.  —  The  Amount 
of  Whiskey  it  took  in  1869  to  qualify  the  Water  in  New  York.  —  Wash- 
ington ventures  into  New  Jersey.  —  Set-to  at  Fort  Lee.  —  Washington 
across  Rivers.  —  Philadelphia  covered.  —  Homesickness  of  Agricul- 
tural Lads.  —  What  befell  Lee  at  a  Tavern.  —  Washington  crosses  the 
Delaware  and  drops  Christmas  Presents  into  German  Stockings.  — The 
Effects  of  Yankee  Doodle  on  Lafayette,  De  Kalb,  Kosciusko,  Pulaski, 
and  others.  —  Friends  of  America  in  England,  Fox,  Hume,  etc.  — 
Friends  of  England  in  America.  —  The  Statue  and  Statutes  of  George 
III.  repealed.  —  Battle  of  Princeton.  —  The  Germans  obtain  Cider  and 
Sausages  at  Danbury.  —  Colonel  Meigs  tickles  the  Feet  of  Long  Island, 
and  makes  Congress  laugh.  —  Colonel  Prescott  is  obliged  to  rise  very 
early  one  Morning  at  Newport.  —  Silas  Deane  and  B.  Franklin  in 
France.  —  What  followed.  —  Burgoyne  tries  to  find  a  back-stair  Pas- 
sage to  New  York.  —  Strong  Gates  in  his  Way  near  Saratoga.  —  Still- 
Water  runs  deep. — Brandy-Wine  an  unpalatable  Drink.  —  French 
Treaty  with  America  in  1778.  —  The  Wheel  moves  in  Water  and  turns 
out  French  Names.  —  Crossing  New  Jersey,  Lord  Howe  collides  with 
Washington  at  Monmouth.  —  Count  d'Estaing  is  prevented  by  an  In- 
junction off  the  New  York  Bar  from  entering  New  York.  —  Coquet- 
ting, but  no  Engagement,  near  Newport.  —  Buzzard's  Bay  and  its 
Roosts.  —  Little  Egg  Harbor  and  its  Nests,  —  what  was  laid  there. — 
The  Benefits  of  the  Wyoming  Massacre. —  Guerilla  War  in  the  South. 


278    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

—  Savannah  trounced.  —  Horse-Neck   and   Putnam's    Home-Stretch 
down  it.  —  Count  d'Estaing's  Yachting.  —  Spain  hankers  for  Gibraltar. 

—  England  as  a  Pawnbroker.  —  Paul  Jones  and  his  Whip. 

WHILE  the  wise  men  at  Philadelphia  were  mak- 
ing the  Fourth  of  July  a  precedent  for  the 
future  by  their  very  readable  and  taking  Declaration 
of  Independence,  the  English  kites  were  gathering 
from  the  north,  south,  and  east  around  New  York. 
Lord  Howe,  from  Halifax ;  Sir  Henry  Clinton,  from 
Charleston  ;  and  Admiral  Howe,  from  England,  drawn 
together  by  focalizing  orders,  settled  down  with  their 
separate  flocks  on  Staten  Island,  —  one  of  the  lintels 
of  the  gateway  to  the  metropolis,  —  numbering  to- 
gether twenty-four  thousand  old  hawks  which  had 
often  whetted  their  beaks  before  in  Spanish,  German, 
and  Dutch  blood. 

Washington  had  about  seventeen  thousand  agricul- 
tural lads,  armed  with  every  possible  and  impossible 
accoutrement,  contrivance,  and  weapon,  to  watch  the 
well-trained  brood.  Lord  Howre,  being  a  royal  com- 
missioner as  well  as  a  general,  understood  letter- writ- 
ing well ;  and  his  first  care  was  to  pen  an  epistle  to 
the  American  commander.  Upon  its  composition  he 
bestowed  as  much  care  as  a  young  man  upon  his  first 
letter  to  the  coy  damsel  whom  he  would  conciliate ; 
but  upon  the  address  he  spent  far  greater  pains.  As 
despatched,  it  read  "  George  Washington,  Esquire." 
Carried  to  the  General,  he  declined  to  receive  it. 
Not  that  he  was  not  an  "  Esq.,"  for  all  Americans  are 
born  such  of  course ;  but  being  a  Squire  in  a  military 
court  whose  proceedings  were  likely  to  be  recorded,  he 
conceived  himself  to  be  entitled  to  different  honors. 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL*  279 

Defeated  in  his  pen  addresses,  the  British  general 
tried  another  stroke.  On  the  22d  of  August,  1776, 
landing  on  Long  Island,  he  commenced  a  march  by 
three  separate  detachments  towards  Brooklyn,  which, 
after  a  severe  battle  on  the  27th  of  August,  he  took. 
It  was  the  first  invasion  by  the  Germans  of  that 
quiet,  pleasant,  New  York  dormitory.  Then  the 
inhabitants  took  it  very  hard.  Now,  however,  they 
have  become  so  much  accustomed  to  the  German 
irruptions,  that  they  have  ceased  to  be  astonished  at 
their  own  frequent  captures.  We  may  add  that  the 
Hessians  did  not  at  that  time  elect  Herr  Martin  Kalb- 
fleisch  mayor  of  Brooklyn.  They  waited  nearly  ninety 
years,  and  then  returned,  not  to  their  mutton,  but  to 
their  veal. 

The  gathering  in  of  one  thousand  dead  and  wounded 
from  the  Long  Island  hills  was  not  the  kind  of  har- 
vesting that  the  agricultural  lads  expected ;  and  as 
they  had  only  engaged  for  a  short  job,  many  of  them 
went  back  on  the  28th  to  their  own  farms.  Wash- 
ington not  liking  to  be  sandwiched  with  the  rest  of 
his  forces,  numbering  some  fourteen  thousand,  between 
Howe's  Germans  and  the  East  River,  contrived  dur- 
ing the  misty  night  of  the  29th  of  August  to  get  over 
the  river  to  New  York,  —  an  exploit  much  vaunted 
then  among  military  men,  but  rendered  very  easy  in 
our  time  by  the  Union  Ferry  Company's  boats.  The 
country  recruits  who  are  now  transported  every  Sun- 
day across  the  same  river  to  Beecher's  church,  when 
there  again  transported,  arid  after  the  service  trans- 
ported back  again,  show  what  changes  have  occurred 
in  the  facilities  for  moving  large  bodies  of  men  over 
the  East  River  since  the  battle  of  Long  Island. 


280     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

Howe's  Hessians  threatening  to  emigrate  en  masse, 
to  New  York,  General  Washington,  on  the  10th  of 
September,  made  room  for  them  by  taking  his  young 
army  to  the  upper  part  of  Manhattan  Island,  giving 
them  an  opportunity  to  see  the  rustic  beauties  of 
Harlem  and  the  country  around  the  present  High 
Bridge.  As  it  sometimes  happens  in  war,  as  well  as 
in  peace,  that  different  gentlemen  take  a  fancy  to  the 
same  piece  of  ground,  whose  possession  and  value  are 
enhanced  thereby,  General  Howe's  desire  to  become 
possessed  of  the  same  real  estate  in  the  actual  occu- 
pation of  Washington,  reached  such  a  pitch  that  he 
sent  a  large  party  of  military  friends  to  seize  it,  even 
if  by  so  doing  they  were  obliged  to  dispossess  its 
occupant.  The  friends  of  the  Squire,  however,  re- 
sented this  violent  attempt  so  spiritedly  that,  as  it  has 
often  fallen  out  since,  the  visitors  to  Harlem  went 
back  to  New  York  with  very  red  eyes  and  faces 
unkindly  disfigured. 

Lord  Howe  next  attempted  to  get  around  the  Squire 
by  sending  a  part  of  his  force,  now  increased  to  thirty- 
five  thousand  men,  into  the  lower  district  of  West- 
chester  to  see  how  Harlem  and  the  Continentals 
looked  from  the  rear,  and  the  other  part  on  a  lively 
picnic  up  the  Hudson  River;  but  the  wary  leader 
of  the  Americans  had  seen,  when  surveying  or  hunt- 
ing in  Virginia  and  Ohio,  too  many  traps  set  by  In- 
dians and  white  trappers  to  be  caught  between  the 
steel  jaws  of  this  English  one.  So  he  pulled  his  men 
away  from  the  cautiously  planted  contrivance  and 
took  them  several  miles  to  the  northeast,  on  the  Bronx 
River.  He  allowed  several  of  them,  however,  to  go 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.  281 

up  to  White  Plains,  where,  to  his  chagrin,  they  were 
Bet  upon  by  a  large  British  party  and  very  disagreea- 
bly handled. 

General  Washington  now  scattered  his  force  all 
along  the  Hudson  River  from  the  city  of  New  York 
up  as  high  as  Peekskill,  his  camp  soups  giving  off  a 
flavor  into  Anthony's  nose.  Some  of  the  water  used 
in  cooking  and  drinking  was  dipped  from  the  Croton 
River.  Thus  early  was  the  Croton  put  into  American 
service.  At  that  time,  we  may  add,  the  fluid  was 
employed  to  qualify  and  reduce  the  whiskey ;  now  the 
whiskey  is  thought  to  be  weak  enough  to  qualify  and 
reduce  the  water.  Ninety-three  years  have  thus 
united  to  furnish  the  same  number  of  reasons  as  the 
composing  elements,  contrary  as  they  may  seem  to 
each  other,  for  mixing  the  fire  and  water.  One  may 
judge  of  the  extent  to  which  the  Croton  is  now  used 
from  the  fact  that  during  1868,  the  amount  of  liquors 
retailed  at  the  opening  throat  of  the  aqueduct  cost 
over  $  150,000,000.  WTe  need  not  add  how,  during 
all  this  period,  fusil-oil  went  down. 

General  Washington  in  November  following  ven- 
tured over  into  New  Jersey,  and,  like  so  many  from 
the  New  York  side  since,  was  having  a  good  time  at 
Fort  Lee,  when  a  body  of  Englishmen  and  Handeckers 
came  down  towards  them  in  a  very  rough  way,  and 
the  excursionists  thought  it  prudent  to  retire,  leaving 
their  provender  behind  them.  But  for  these  little 
surprises,  war  would  lose  some  of  its  briskest  features. 
Washington  was  now  compelled  to  retreat,  with  num- 
bers daily  diminishing,  before  foes  superior  in  num- 
bers and  constantly  augmenting  as  they  pursued.  In 


282     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

fact,  he  was  obliged  to  bridge  or  ford  the  principal 
rivers  or  streams  in  Northern  New  Jersey;  thus  furnish- 
ing the  best  precedent  which  the  Camden  and  Aniboy 
Railroad  engineers  have  ever  had  for  carrying  people 
across  New  Jersey  soil  and  waters  in  a  bad  temper. 
Newark,  New  Brunswick,  and  Princeton  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemy.  Some  people  assert  that  they 
are  in  them  still. 

December  8,  1776,  Washington  passed  over  the 
Delaware  River  to  cover  Philadelphia,  which  now 
had  much  need  of  a  lid,  for  it  was  in  a  terrible  stew. 
The  country  lads,  as  these  reverses  pressed  upon  them, 
took  a  homesickness  which  nothing  but  their  mothers 
and  their  own  homes  could  cure.  Only  about  three 
thousand  remained,  shivering  and  tentless,  and  lying 
near  the  inhospitable  track  of  the  New  York  and 
Philadelphia  Railroad.  Lord  Cornwallis  but  waited 
for  a  cold  night  to  bridge  over  the  Delaware  to  enable 
him  to  take  the  Squire  and  his  dwindling  posse  of 
men. 

Trenton  was  the  knife-balance  of  American  fate. 
Upon  a  nicely  poised  point  it  swung  tremblingly  for 
a  weary,  anxious  fortnight. 

General  Sullivan,  having  succeeded  the  waspish 
Lee,  who  was  one  night  captured  at  a  tavern  in  Bask- 
ingridge  by  a  party  more  spirit-ed  than  his  own,  led, 
through  the  gloomy  days  of  mid-December,  a  force  of 
four  thousand  men,  provided  with  ammunition,  across 
the  country  to  Washington.  Timely  indeed  was  the 
reinforcement;  for  Washington,  although  just  made 
by  a  Congressional  decree  supreme  manager  of  the 
war,  had  more  need  of  powder  than  power. 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  RE  VOLUTION  AKY  WHEEL.  283 

Christmas  eve,  1776,  was  a  very  jolly  one  in  the 
British  camp.  The  commander,  officers,  and  men,  all 
thought  that  the  American  fiddle  was  broken  and 
about  to  be  hung  up  forever ;  and  so,  in  their  Saxon 
and  Teutonic  joy,  they  hung  up  their  stockings. 
The  shrewd  American  Squire,  borrowing  old  Santa 
Claus's  coach  and  horses,  and  filling  the  former  with 
bullets  and  powder,  crossed  the  Delaware  about  mid- 
night and  suddenly  dropped  his  presents  through  the 
camp  of  his  foreign  visitors.  Never  were  the  Hessians 
so  taken  by  Christmas  gifts.  In  fact,  fourteen  hun- 
dred of  them  were  so  overcome  by  the  novel  presence 
of  Washington,  that  they  gave  themselves  up  to 
American  hospitality  and  followed  their  new  friends 
across  the  river  to  their  now  merry  quarters. 

The  American  fiddle  was  mended  again ;  and  its 
strains  of  Yankee  Doodle  were  heard  across  the  Atlan- 
tic by  a  young  French  marquis,  only  nineteen  years  of 
age,  of  a  very  old  family,  with  a  very  young  wife,  and 
an  income  of  $  40,000  a  year,  —  an  income  in  those 
pre-Erie  and  pre-petroleum  times  highly  respectable. 
Other  Frenchmen  also  listened  to,  and,  like  Lafayette, 
were  moved  by,  the  touching  airs  of  freedom,  which 
passed  the  Ehine  also,  and  were  drunk  in  with  his 
hock  by  the  Prussian  Steuben,  a  military  martinet 
and  schoolmaster,  much  needed  in  our  militia  school- 
house.  The  Baron  was  then  generalissimo  of  his  se- 
rene, discomposable  highness,  the  Prince  of  Hohen- 
zollern-Hechingen,  whose  magnificent  titles  would,  if 
printed  on  a  straight  strip  of  paper,  have  easily  reached 
across  his  principality  ;  but  sounding  as  they  were, 
they  did  not  fill  the  ear  of  Steuben  like  the  notes  from 


284    TIIE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

that  repaired  fiddle.  The  lively  adagio  airs  also  struck 
upon  the  sensitive  vibrating  soul  of  De  Kalb,  a  noble 
of  Alsace,  lifting  it  to  highest  impulses,  which  carried 
him  through  four  years  of  patriotic  sendee,  and  even 
bore  him  in  lofty  triumph  across  the  death  channel  in 
1780,  when  at  the  battle  of  Camden  he  was  carried 
away  from  the  daring  front,  loaded  with  eleven  bullets 
in  various  parts  of  his  body. 

These  same  free  airs  fell  upon  those  straight,  up- 
right Poles,  Kosciusko  and  Pulaski,  and  so  vivifying 
them  by  warming  heats,  that  through  the  whole  war 
they  bore  most  fragrant  fruit,  until  at  last  they  stood 
as  that  vintage  so  ripely  planted  in  Mrs.  Browning's 
verse, 

"  Where  the  snn  with  a  golden  mouth  doth  blow 
Blue  bubbles  of  grapes  down  a  vineyard  row,"  — 

the  blue  grapes  of  blistered  steel. 

Even  in  England  thousands  of  hearts  warmed  to 
the  American  cause.  In  Parliament,  Charles  James 
Fox,  Earl  Chatham,  Edmund  Burke,  the  virtuous  Lord 
Camden,  and  others  ;  out  of  it,  David  Hume  the  histo- 
rian, Edward  Gibbon,  whose  studies  of  the  rise  as  well 
as  the  fall  of  Eome  had  led  him  down  into  the  crypt 
of  history,  and  countless  others  able,  learned,  and  good, 
as  true  to  state  as  to  individual  freedom,  gave  vent 
and  weighty  shape  to  the  well-considered  convictions 
of  the  injustice  of  the  attempt  to  compel  the  Colonies 
to  submit  to  impositions  unassented  to  by  themselves. 
But  while  in  England  there  were  advocates  of  colonial 
freedom,  in  the  Colonies  there  were  friends  of  Parlia- 
mentary oppression.  These  last  were  infiltrated  more  or 
less  through  all  the  United  settlements ;  but  they  gath- 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.  285 

ered  in  notable  volume  in  and  about  the  then  consid- 
erable village  of  New  York,  —  numbering  about  26,000 
inhabitants,  —  where  all  the  vigilant  zeal  of  Alexan- 
der Hamilton,  an  ardent,  eloquent  young  lawyer,  re- 
cently arrived  from  his  native  West  Indies,  the  equally 
vigorous  but  cooler  patriotism  of  John  Jay,  and  the  alert 
wisdom  of  other  Sons  of  Liberty  were  needed,  to  make 
head  against  the  Tory  current  whose  momentum  and 
velocity,  quickened  by  wealth,  social  position,  and  offi- 
cial experience,  swept  with  force  and  volumed  power 
through  the  island  city.  Rude  indeed  was  the  shock 
given  to  the  Manhattan  loyalists  by  the  overthrow  in 
the  Bowling  Green  of  the  leaden  statue  of  George  III., 
and  the  conversion  of  its  characteristically  heavy 
metal  into  lively  Continental  bullets.  The  popular 
repeal  of  this  loyal  statue  was  soon  followed  in  Con- 
gress by  the  repeal  of  more  important  representatives 
of  royalty,  —  leaden-typed  statutes. 

The  year  1777  opened  with  the  battle  of  Princeton, 
fought  under  the  leadership  of  Washington  and  Corn- 
wallis,  whereby  two  hundred  English  and  Germans  were 
put  under  sodded  trenches,  to  furnish  in  after  times,  in 
addition  to  their  use  in  well-rounded  school-boys'  pe- 
riods, a  special  resort  for  the  students  of  Nassau  Hall, 
accompanied  by  such  persuadable  female  companions 
—  Dutch,  American,  English,  or  German  —  as  might 
relish  history  studied  under  the  advantageous  lights 
of  a  pair  of  admiring  eyes. 

In  a  few  days  after  this  battle,  all  New  Jersey  was 
cleared  of  British  and  Hessians,  who  dispersed  in 
various  directions,  and  sought  to  keep  up  their  courage 
for  several  succeeding  months  by  raids  upon  those 


286     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

peaceful,  drowsy  villages,  Danbury  in  Connecticut, 
and  Peekskill  on  the  Hudson,  and  harrying  off'  some 
of  the  delights  of  a  German  stomach,  —  winter  apples, 
cider,  and  sausages.  On  the  other  hand,  Colonel  Meigs 
tickled  the  feet  of  Long  Island  one  night  in  May,  and 
touched  up  some  British  corns  on  its  Sag  Harbor  toe, 
making  even  the  grave  Congress  to  laugh  outright  in 
a  broad  vote  of  thanks ;  while  Colonel  Barton,  early 
one  morning  in  July,  took,  in  spite  of  his  guards,  the 
British  Major-General  Prescott  out  of  his  bed,  where 
he  was  cuddling  up  to  escape  the  Ehode  Island  fogs, 
and  bore  him  off  through  his  own  troops,  and  even 
through  a  large  British  fleet  lying  off  the  main-land,  — 
a  little  surprise  party  highly  relished  by  the  visitors 
and  their  colonial  friends. 

The  arrival  in  France,  in  the  autumn  of  1776,  of 
Silas  Deane,  a  Connecticut  delegate  to  Congress,  and 
of  Benjamin  Franklin,  as  commissioners,  soon  raised 
the  gates  which  had  barred  French  supplies  of  men 
and  means  from  flowing  into  'the  service  of  the  Colo- 
nies. Louis  XVI.  and  Vergennes,  his  Foreign  Min- 
ister, had  neither  forgotten  the  great  fight  for  the 
American  belt,  nor  the  wrench  which  French  pride 
had  suffered  by  the  tossing  of  the  prize,  but  fifteen 
years  ago,  into  the  eager  hands  of  its  uncivil  rival. 
They  were,  therefore,  more  than  ready  to  help  the, 
ward  escape  from  her  self-constituted  guardian,  and 
to  send  her  secretly  such  instruments  as  would  file 
off  her  bolts,  cut  away  the  prison-like  fences  around 
her  suspiciously  guarded  dwelling-place,  and  enlarge 
her  straitening  liberties.  They  had  even,  in  the  spring 
of  1777,  secretly  encouraged,  while  pretending  to  pre- 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.  287 

vent,  the  armed  emigration  of  Lafayette  and  others  to 
America. 

Just  about  the  time  that  these  French  gentlemen, 
with  Baron  De  Kalb,  touched  foot  on  American  soil  at 
Georgetown,  South  Carolina,  an  Englishman  named 
Burgoyne,  whose  acquaintance  we  made  at  Bunker 
Hill,  two  years  ago,  came  on  shore  at  Quebec.  Enter- 
ing the  Colonies  by  that  favorite  back-stairs,"  Lake 
Champlain,  he  turned  the  well-known  and  well-worn 
knob,  Ticonderoga,  and  got  himself  and  his  attendants 
fairly  inside  the  American  door-yard.  Advancing,  he 
came  to  a  small  place  called  Stillwater,  where  he 
tripped  his  toe  over  a  little  hillock,  called  a  breast- 
work, raised  by  Kosciusko,  aided  by  that  crack  rifleman, 
Morgan,  and  pitched  forward  faint  and  weak  from  this 
unexpected  accident.  Still,  his  English  robustness  of 
strength  and  pluck  was  such  as  to  make  him  quite 
confident  of  being  able  to  reach,  without  difficulty,  the 
wing  of  the  house,  called  Albany,  and  thence  gaining 
access  to  its  centre,  New  York,  where  he  expected  to 
meet  Sir  William  Howe,  and  with  him  to  succeed  in 
bringing  back  once  more  the  spirited  young  American 
heiress  to  the  selfish  love  of  her  late  champion.  But 
quite  to  his  surprise  he  discovered  before  him,  near 
Saratoga  Springs,  Gates  through  which  he  must  pass 
in  order  to  make  any  progress,  —  Gates  so  strong  that, 
unless  he  could  force  their  Polish  locks,  their  American 
hinges,  and  solid,  iron-riveted  timbers,  he  must  perish 
for  want  of  food.  The  Gates  were  not  passed;  and 
October  17,  1777,  he  gave  himself  up,  with  5,791  offi- 
cers and  men,  and  forty-six  hundred  muskets.  Forty- 
two  pieces  of  brass  cannon  also  passed  at  that  time  to 


288    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED  STATES. 

the  Americans,  —  brass  which  gave  them  thenceforward 
more  confidence  and  cheek.  Much  need,  too,  of  it  had 
they;  for  in  the  preceding  two  months,  Washington, 
with  thirteen  thousand  men,  following  Howe  and  Corn- 
wallis  southward,  with  a  body  of  eighteen  thousand 
men  under  their  command,  met  them  a  few  miles  south 
of  Philadelphia,  on  a  little,  dispirited  stream  called 
the  Brandywine,  and  there  drank  the  disagreeable 
dregs  of  a  defeat,  made  even  more  distasteful  by  the 
fact  that  it  was  the  first  American  drink  which  Lafay- 
ette and  Pulaski  had  an  opportunity  of  sipping  in  this 
country.  Exceedingly  nauseated  by  this  drink,  they 
all  took  another  draught  October  4th  at  Germantown ; 
but  this  decoction  proved  equally  unpalatable.  It  re- 
quired all  the  beneficial  effects  of  the  Saratoga  water 
to  correct  the  disturbed  action  produced  by  the  Brandy- 
wine  and  the  Germantown  potion. 

The  fury  of  George  III.  at  the  close  of  the  cam- 
paign of  1777  was  perfectly  Hanoverian.  He  had  been 
led  to  expect  the  speedy  submission  of  the  Colonies ; 
but  he  had  reluctantly  discovered  that  early  disasters 
had  only  stiffened  the  gristle  of  discontent  into  the 
bone  of  unconquerable  resistance.  His  obstinacy, 
however,  in  prosecuting  the  war  was  met  by  equal 
firmness  on  the  part  of  the  Colonies  in  defending  their 
rights.  If,  like  one  of  his  predecessors,  who,  irritated 
by  the  resistance  of  Scotland  to  his  royal  wishes, 
threatened  to  make  that  country  a  royal  hunting- 
ground,  George  III.  threatened  to  make  a  shooting- 
park  of  North  America,  the  colonists,  in  the  spirit  of 
the  Scottish  nobleman  who,  in  reply  to  the  menace, 
answered,  "  In  that  case,  may  it  please  your  Majesty,  I 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.  289 

must  be  home  to  uncouple  the  hounds,"  were  fully 
determined  to  muzzle  the  royal  pack,  and  to  increase 
their  own  war-dogs. 

Parliament,  however,  curbed  by  the  strong  arm  of 
popular  sentiment,  found  it  best  to  hold  in  check  the 
royal  passion  and  resentment.  It  even  slipped  from 
the  leash,  not  the  savage  bloodhounds  of  strife,  but 
three  very  sleek-looking  house-pets,  called  Peace  Com- 
missioners, who  came  with  nice  little  dainty  titbits  in 
their  mouths,  pardons  and  promises,  to  drop  around 
the  American  door-yard. 

Too  late  !  —  these  royal  poodles  and  King  Charles 
spaniels.  America  had  outgrown  pets,  petting,  and 
even  pantalettes.  She  had  come  of  age,  and  deliber- 
ately made  up  her  mind  to  leave  the  uncomfortable 
homestead  and  to  do  for  herself.  She  had  a  good 
friend  in  France,  who  encouraged  her  independent  no- 
tions, and  who,  on  the  6th  of  February,  1778,  told 
everybody  —  England,  America,  and  the  other  nations 
—  that  she  was  ready  to  stand  by  the  plucky  Colonies. 
This  declaration,  usually  termed  a  treaty  of  alliance 
and  commerce,  was  received  with  great  joy  by  Amer- 
ica, and  with  keen  resentment  by  England.  Russia, 
always  our  friend  from  the  first,  clapped  France  on  the 
back  for  her  conduct,  and  the  people  of  Europe,  out 
of  dislike  to  England,  sided  with  the  Colonies,  and 
applauded  their  new  friend. 

The  old  rivals,  England  and  France,  again  scowled, 
flushed  up,  and  clinched. 

During  the  rest  of  our  Eevolution  French  names 
are  turned  up  by  the  wheel,  which  had  so  far  run 
entirely  on  land,  side  by  side  with  American.  It  was 
13  & 


290    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

now  at  times  to  be  put  into  water,  and  to  dip  its  blades 
into  an  element  which,  troubled  by  navigation  acts, 
had  separated  us  from  England,  but  which  now, 
blessed  by  a  treaty  of  amity,  was  to  unite  us  to  the 
country  of  Lafayette. 

At  the  opening  of  the  crocuses,  in  the  spring  of 
1778,  Lord  Howe  and  his  brother,  the  Admiral,  were 
in  the  Quaker  City,  a  city  which,  though  mainly  made 
up  of  the  disciples  of  peace,  wielded  both  pen  and 
musket  in  favor  of  war  for  peace.  A  French  fleet, 
commanded  by  Count  d'Estaing,  sailed  from  France 
to  pen  up  in  the  Delaware  the  English  brothers  with 
their  fleet  and  army  ;  but  these  some  Howe  getting  at 
once  wind  of  this  intention  and  into  their  own  sails, 
contrived  to  escape  to  New  York.  Part  of  the  British 
forces  took  the  land  route  to  New  York,  courageously 
braving  the  dangers  incident  to  New  Jersey  travelling. 
A  little  accident  befell  them  on  the  route,  June  28th, 
about  eighteen  miles  south  of  Philadelphia,  at  a  small 
place  then  called  Monmouth,  where,  colliding  with 
Washington  and  the  artillery  train  of  which  he  was 
conductor,  they  lost  three  hundred  men.  The  Ameri- 
can loss  was  only  seventy,  —  very  trifling  for  a  gen- 
uine American  collision.  It  was  in  this  battle  that 
General  Charles  Lee  became  insubordinate,  lost  his 
reason,  and  was  cast  on  the  lee  shore  of  patriotic  duty, 
—  a  misfortune  which,  eighty-three  years  later,  hap- 
pened to  another  general  of  the  same  name. 

The  French  fleet,  finding  on  its  arrival  at  Phila- 
delphia, that  the  Howes  had  gone  to  New  York, 
followed  suit  thitherward;  but  on  reaching  Sandy 
Hook,  it  was  defeated  in  its  intended  action  against 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.  291 

them  by  an  injunction  raised  by  the  New  York  bar, 
and  so  proceeded  to  that  fashionable  watering-place, 
Newport.  Admiral  Howe  soon  after  took  a  notion  to 
go  to  the  same  place,  and,  being  reinforced  by  several 
ships,  set  out  with  his  squadron.  D'Estaing,  inter- 
mitting his  study  of  the  "  Eound  Tower,"  "  The  Spout- 
ing Kock,"  and  "The  Dumplings,"  sailed  out  like,  a 
generous  foe,  to  meet  him  half-way.  The  fleets,  long 
in  ogling  sight,  and  loath  to  leave  each  other,  were 
yet  kept  apart  by  those  adverse  winds  and  rough 
seas  which  sometimes  in  naval  war,  as  in  love,  neither 
blow  nor  run  smooth,  and  which,  at  least  in  this  case, 
—  as  sometimes  happens  with  lovers,  —  prevented  an 
engagement. 

In  September,  General  Clinton,  who  had  superseded 
Lord  Howe,  sent  out  two  marauding  expeditions,  one 
to  Buzzard's  Bay,  which  burnt  seventy  American  ships 
roosting  there  on  their  anchors ;  the  other  against 
Little  Egg  Harbor,  which  took  a  considerable  amount 
of  stores  laid  there,  over  which  much  British  cackling 
was  had. 

The  massacre  at  Wyoming  by  Colonel  John  Butler 
and  his  Indian  allies  —  only  palliated  by  the  plea  that, 
while  it  cruelly  put  out  of  existence  some  three  hun- 
dred settlers,  it  called  into  being  the  beautiful  "  Ger- 
trude of  Wyoming  "  —  and  the  barbarities  committed 
by  another  band  of  Tories  and  savages  at  Cherry  Val- 
ley, raised  the  hair  on  the  head  of  many  in  Europe  as 
well  as  in  America. 

Towards  the  South  the  war  now  turns.  The  French 
and  English  fleets,  having  sailed  for  the  West  Indies, 
thus  relieving  Sir  Henry  Clinton  of  a  natural  anxiety 


292    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

about  New  York,  he  despatched  thence,  in  November 
of  the  same  year,  a  force  of  two  thousand  men  against 
Georgia.  Savannah,  just  then  preparing  to  receive 
her  first  bran-new  city  charter,  and  feeling  like  a  boy 
who  is  promised  his  first  pair  of  long  pantaloons  to 
cover  his  lengthening  proportions,  was  taken  in  hand 
by  Clinton's  military  schoolmaster  and  humiliated  by 
a  gentle  spanking.  Her  sandy  bottom,  however,  stood 
the  trouncing  well.  She  had  the  hardihood  even  to 
look  right  pleased  and  content  when  it  was  soon  after 
told  her  that  an  expedition  sent  out  against  Port 
Royal,  South  Carolina,  had  been  soundly  ferruled. 

The  year  1779  opened  with,  and  shut  upon,  a  lively 
guerrila  war,  carried  on  through  Georgia  and  South 
Carolina  by  small  bodies  of  troops,  so  light  as  almost 
to  seem  feathered,  led  by  Moultrie,  Pickens,  and  other 
partisan  officers,  who  teased  and  worried  the  enemy 
by  incessant  scratches  and  irritating  stings,  especially 
annoying  in  the  summer-time  and  amid  a  warm 
climate. 

At  the  North  the  British  forces  spent  themselves  on 
small  excursions  out  of  New  York,  very  much  as  many 
people  still  do,  and  with  the  same  result,  —  exhausting 
their  own  means  and  boring  the  people  up  the  Sound 
and  Hudson  River.  On  one  of  these  excursions  under 
Governor  Tryon,  an  attack  by  fifteen  hundred  men 
was  made  in  March,  1779,  upon  Horse-Neck,  one  of 
Putnam's  outposts,  a  high,  steep  hill  defended  by  one 
hundred  and  fifty  men  and  two  old  rusty  field-pieces. 
The  powder  failing,  these  loud-talking  mouthpieces  of 
the  little  party  were  almost  silenced,  when  a  cavalry 
charge  was  ordered  upon  the  small  band  at  the  top  of 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL. 


293 


A&~$^wffi'' 

fSSvr^Z :,  *  i^^r^.  Lrt  WH 


^sr   "^  9~J£-A^:'y<d 

Nr      rf''*       . —    J\          ^sJL^rv  -Xi  ^ 


^    /^^/ 

PUTNAM'S  HOME-STRETCH  DOWN  HORSE-NECK. 


294    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

the  hill.  Putnam's  troops  were  directed  to  withdraw 
behind  a  morass  inaccessible  to  cavalry,  when  Put- 
nam himself,  staying  behind  to  serve  the  hard  old 
swivels  with  the  few  grains  of  powder  freshly  discov- 
ered, and,  finding  himself  closely  pressed  by  assailants, 
leaped  upon  his  horse  and  launched  himself  down  the 
precipitous  ledge  amid  a  tempest  of  bullets  and  stones. 
It  was  neck  or  nothing;  and  he  won  by  a  neck, — 
his  own,  —  which,  had  the  horse  given  out,  would 
probably  have  been  stretched. 

In  September  of  this  year  Count  d'Estaing  returned 
from  the  West  Indies  with  his  fleet;  and  having  in 
vain  tried  to  recapture  Savannah,  took  French  leave  of 
it  and  of  America,  having  had  a  yachting  trip  in 
American  waters  with  the  usual  yachting  experience, 
—  a  good  deal  of  getting  up,  a  deal  of  getting  down, 
large  consumption  of  provisions  and  liquors,  high 
hopes  in  idle  state-rooms,  and  low  performances  on 
deck. 

Spain,  now  conceiving  a  violent  taste  for  Gibraltar, 
Jamaica,  and  the  two  Floridas,  —  for  the  taking  of 
which  by  England  aforetime  she  was  of  course  very 
critical  upon  Albion,  —  seized  the  opportunity  of 
Britain's  multiplying  engagements  with  America  and 
France,  to  let  her  know  that  she  desired  an  immediate 
return  of  these  forced  loans.  England  of  course  in- 
sisted that,  if  she  was  an  international  pawnbroker, 
she  was  not  obliged  to  surrender  articles  taken  in 
until  she  chose  to  give  them  up,  or  until  payment  was 
made  with  shot  and  shell.  She  resented  and  resisted 
the  demand ;  resisted  it  when  Spain  stepped  up  to 
her  coast  with  a  large  fleet,  resisted  it  successfully  for 


SECOND  TURN  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.  295 

three  years  at  the  Gibraltar  Eock  itself,  and  resisted  it 
wherever  Spanish  gentlemen  appeared  to  assert  it, 
either  on  sea  or  land. 

Meanwhile,  on  the  23d  of  September,  1779,  Paul 
Jones,  a  Scotchman  by  birth,  and  who,  like  his  apos- 
tolic namesake,  had  been  "  in  shipwrecks  often "  and 
"  in  perils  in  the  sea,"  the  first  who  ever  displayed 
the  American  flag,  now  sailing  the  good  ship  "  Bon 
Homme  Richard,"  —  an  old  Indiaman  converted  into 
a  war  vessel,  —  after  capturing  with  this  old  lugger 
twenty-three  merchantmen,  at  last  fell  in  with  two 
heavy  English  frigates.  Lashing  his  own  ship  to  the 
larger  one,  he  so  laid  on  other  strings  that  at  the  end 
of  two  hours  he  had  thoroughly  whipped  both,  —  a 
whipping  whose  stinging  recollections  brought  the 
color  for  a  long  time  into  even  the  ruddy  cheek  of  Mr. 
Bull 


CHAPTEE  IV. 

THE   LAST   TURN  OF   THE    REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL  ;    AC- 
CELERATIONS ;  BLOWINGS  ;  THE   GRIST. 

1780-1783. 

The  different  Opening  of  1780  for  those  who  pushed  and  those  who  ob- 
structed the  Revolutionary  Wheel.  —  The  Strain  on  both  Sides.  — 
Hard  Spring  in  Charleston  in  Consequence  of  Leaden  Hail-Storms.  — 
How  these  Storms  spread;  and  how  the  Crops  were  saved  from  Ruin 
by  Marion,  Sumter,  and  Pickens. — The  Carolina  Game-Cock,  and 
his  sharp  Spurs  in  the  Sides  of  Cornwallis  and  Tarleton.  —  Gates  broken 
down,  and  the  Presidency  lost  at  Camden.  —  Greene  set  up  in  his 
Place,  proving  a  good  standing  Color.  —  The  Village  of  St.  Louis  as- 
sailed. —  Andre"  humiliates  himself,  and  is  exalted.  —  Arnold  gets 
$  50,000,  a  Brigadier's  Commission,  and  is  elected  by  General  Contempt 
into  the  Order  of  Judas  Iscariot.  —  New- Year's  Day  among  the  Penn- 
sylvania Troops  at  Morristown.  —  The  United  States  Treasury,  made 
less  Celestial,  becomes  defiled  by  filthy  Lucre.  —  The  Goring  and 
Tossing  of  Tarleton  by  Morgan  at  the  Cow-Pens.  —  An  Irish-like  Fight 
at  Eutaw  Springs.  —  Southern  Hunters  around  the  British  Flock  at 
Charleston  and  Savannah.  —  The  troublesome  Seizure  of  Virginia  As- 
semblymen. —  How  the  Captors  missed  burning  their  Fingers  with 
Jefferson's  red  Hair.  —  Cornwallis  enmeshed  at  Yorktown.  —  What 
Lord  North  said.  —  What  the  English  George  threatened  and  what  the 
American  George  did.  —  "Let  there  be  Peace";  and  Peace  was. — 
What  England  lost  and  America  gained.  —  The  kind  of  Grist  ob- 
tained. 

'  I  ^HE  military  revolutionary  wheel  had  now -been 
J-  revolving  nearly  five  years.  Seventeen  Hun- 
dred and  Eighty  began  with  very  different  prospects 
for  the  promoters  and  opposers  of  its  operations.  The 
former  were  poor,  their  workmen  wretchedly  clothed, 


LAST   TURN   OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.      297 

badly  fed,  discontented  with  the  small  pay  promised, 
and  often  threatening  to  strike  because  that  pay  was 
only  irregularly  and  partially  paid,  and,  when  given, 
only  afforded  in  depreciated  and  depreciating  new  paper 
promises.  The  latter,  on  the  contrary,  with  that  obsti- 
nacy which  sinks  deeper  and  rises  higher  with  the 
rising  tide  of  opposition,  and  possessed  of  resources 
to  match  this  dogged  pride,  made  larger  preparations 
to  open  the  coming  campaign.  Parliament  voted  to 
add  to  its  colonial  army  one  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  men,  and  wrought  up  the  sinews  to  carry 
this  then  enormous  live  weight  to  twenty  million 
sterling  pounds. 

It  was  a  hard  spring  in  Charleston ;  for  it  hailed 
heavy  iron  hail-stones  from  Sir  Henry  Clinton's  bat- 
teries, from  April  1  to  May  12,  1780,  when  the  city 
became  so  riddled  that  it  gave  up.  The  storm  soon 
spread,  bursting  over  the  entire  States  of  North  and 
South  Carolina,  and  beating  down  for  a  time,  as  with 
iron  flails,  the  growing  harvest  of  patriotism.  A  good 
part  of  the  crop  was,  however,  finally  saved  during  the 
late  summer,  by  Marion,  Pickens,  and  Sumter,  who, 
with  their  sturdy  little  bands  of  reapers,  toiled  all 
through  the  blinding  storms  with  high  spirits,  and 
without  pay.  Sumter  was  well  called  "  The  Carolina 
Game-cock " ;  for  he  often  drove  his  sharp  spurs  into 
Cornwallis  and  Tarleton,  and  roused  a  very  cheery  feel- 
ing by  his  crows  through  those  gray  mornings  of  lib- 
erty. 

Gates,  who  had  so  successfiilly  administered  Sara- 
toga water  to  Burgoyne  and  his  men  three  years  be- 
fore, was  despatched  jn  haste  to  look  after  the  obstinate 
13* 


298    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

and  severe  cases  of  Clinton,  Eawdon,  and  Cornwallis 
in  South  Carolina  ;  but,  as  it  often  happens,  the  remedies 
successfully  applied  to  one  patient  often  fail  with  an- 
other. At  Camden  —  a  name  which  should  have  been 
propitious  to  American  arms  —  the  army  of  Gates  was 
seized  by  that  frightful  epidemic,  a  panic;  and  ran 
away,  carrying  off  with  them  their  general's  sole  chance 
for  the  next  Presidency. 

Nathaniel  Greene,  a  Ehode  Island  Quaker,  —  the 
ungloved  right  hand  of  Washington,  who  had  served 
in  the  army  with  brilliant  and  yet  solid  success  since 
June,  1775,  —  succeeded  the  unsuccessful  Gates  in 
August,  1780  ;  but  the  heats  of  summer  melted  out  all 
serious  campaign  attempts  on  either  side,  through  the 
South,  during  that  season. 

St.  Louis,  then  a  village  sixteen  years  old  with  nine 
hundred  and  sixty  inhabitants,  exalted  above  the  dirty 
Mississippi  on  two  terraces,  or  a  double  platform  of 
earth,  was  assailed  by  some  Englishmen  and  Indians 
from  Michilimacldnac,  —  as  it  has  often  been  since, 
by  people  of  all  nations ;  but  on  this  first  invasion 
the  invaders  were  as  glad  to  get  away  as  their  succes- 
sors have  been  to  stay. 

Meanwhile  General  Greene  was  detailed  to  act  as 
president  of  the  court  of  inquiry  upon  Major  Andre", 
that  historical  romance  of  our  war,  as  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots  is  the  sentiment  of  the  tough  annals  of  Scotland. 
This  handsome,  romantic,  cultivated,  and  high-bred 
Englishman,  then  in  his  twenty-ninth  year,  who  had 
unsuccessfully  courted  in  Ireland  the  future  mother  of 
Maria  Edgeworth,  the  novelist,  and  then  won  a  better 
fortune  from  the  golden  hands  of  trade,  had  afterwards 


LAST   TURN   OF   THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.     299 

flung  himself  into  the  stern  arms  of  war.  Lowering 
himself  to  the  mean  business  of  carrying  dangerous, 
sealed  secrets  in  his  boots,  outside  the  mails,  contrary 
to  all  laws,  and  caught  in  the  act  by  three  militia- 
men, who,  after  playing  cards  with  each  other,  played  a 
sharper  and  more  patriotic  game  with  him,  he  was 
most  disagreeably  elevated  to  the  rank  of  a  spy,  and 
sent  in  consequence  to  find  out  the  great  secret  on  a 
very  lonesome  journey. 

His  principal,  Benedict  Arnold,  —  who  had  suffered 
the  canker  of  excessive  extravagance  to  eat  through 
his  brave  and  well-shredded  military  coat,  —  escaping 
from  our  dangling  line  into  the  English  straighter 
ones,  received  fifty  thousand  dollars  and  a  brigadier- 
general's  commission.  He  was  subsequently  elected 
by  General  Contempt  into  the  celebrated  order  of 
Judas  Iscariot. 

The  campaign  of  1781  was  inaugurated  New- Year's 
day  by  a  good-natured  and  semi-patriotic  insurrection 
among  the  Pennsylvanian  troops  stationed  at  Morris- 
town,  New  Jersey;  not  on  account  of  the  Jersey 
ways,  usually  deemed  so  hostile  to  foreigners,  but 
by  reason  of  the  scant  fare,  clothing,  and  pocket- 
money  to  which  they  were  reduced.  Marching  to 
Princeton,  they  were  met  by  emissaries  from  General 
Clinton,  with  large  offers  of  bounty-money  to  enlist 
for  King  George ;  but  the  noble-minded  troops,  spurn- 
ing these  attempts  upon  their  virtue,  delivered  up 
these  agents,  as  spies,  to  General  Wayne.  A  com- 
mittee from  Congress  relieved  the  just  needs  of  the 
insurgents,  and  offered  them  rewards  for  their  patriotic 
treatment  of  the  spies  ;  but  they  refused  to  accept  pay 
for  what,  they  truly  asserted,  was  but  their  duty. 


300    THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

With  such  metal  were  the  new  moulds  of  American 
life  filling  up.  By  such  iron  bands  was  the  Revolu- 
tionary wheel  made  strong  and  irreversible. 

The  attention  of  Congress  was  now  seriously  and 
effectively  drawn  to  the  condition  of  the  army,  —  the 
crank  of  the  wheel.  Robert  Morris  was  appointed 
Superintendent  of  the  Treasury ;  and  the  treasury  — 
till  then  a  very  celestial  affair,  undefiled  by  filthy  lucre, 
and  having  out-goes  in  the  place  of  in-gots  —  was  tol- 
erably supplied  by  taxation  at  home  and  loans  abroad. 

Again  the  scenes  of  the  war  lie  south  of  Baltimore. 
At  the  Cowpens,  in  South  Carolina,  Colonel  Tarleton 
was  caught  on  the  horns  of  Morgan,  three  hundred  of 
his  men  tossed  fatally,  and  the  rest,  with  their  leader, 
severely  gored  and  gashed.  Cornwallis  soon  found  that 
the  Southern  commander  was  not  a  Greenehorn.  At 
Guilford  Court-House,  the  English  leader,  with  a  supe- 
rior force,  met  the  American  general,  with  4,500  men, 
and  after  a  severe  grapple,  fell  back  with  the  air  and  con- 
viction of  a  man  disagreeably  undeceived.  The  Ameri- 
cans now  seemed  to  have  received  an  ally  in  general 
success  ;  for  in  April,  May,  and  June  they  retook,  one 
after  another,  all  the  forts,  outposts,  cities,  and  military 
points  occupied  by  Lord  Eawdon.  On  the  Catawba, 
Morgan  gave  to  Tarleton  a  little  more  grape,  which 
sent  his  lines  reeling  backwards  in  awkward  confu- 
sion towards  the  main  body. 

As  soon  as  September  began  to  cool  the  air  and 
make  travelling  tolerable  in  a  warm  climate,  General 
Greene,  with  an  American  party,  and  Colonel  Stewart, 
with  an  English  company,  took  it  into  their  heads  mu- 
tually to  visit  Eutaw  Springs,  about  fifty  miles  west  of 


LAST   TURN   OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.      301 

Charleston.  The  meeting  was  unusually  lively ;  in  fact, 
quite  an  Irish  gathering.  Like  most  Irish  fights,  too, 
it  was  impossible  to  say,  which  had  the  worst  of  it. 
Both  sides  held  a  funeral  wake  over  about  three  hun- 
dred killed,  and  claimed  the  fewest  graves  and  victory. 

After  this  affair,  the  British  flock,  which  had  been 
scattered  more  or  less  over  the  two  Carolinas  and 
Georgia,  gathered  back  and  alighted  for  a  long  time  on 
two  favorite  spots,  Charleston  and  Savannah.  Near- 
them  gradually  collected  ready  American  hunters  and 
fowlers,  fond  of  foreign  game,  vigilant  in  watching  and 
very  desirous  of  bagging  the  entire  lot. 

Meanwhile,  Cornwallis  had  advanced  northward 
through  North  Carolina  into  Virginia,  where  the  young 
French  marquis  —  more  fortunate  than  the  almost 
useless  French  fleets,  first  under  D'Estaing,  and  after- 
wards under  Admiral  De  Ternay  —  was  doing  good 
service.  The  route  of  Cornwallis  was  nearly  along  the 
present  track  of  the  Wilmington  and  Weldon  Eailroad, 
which  fortunately  for  him  was  not  then  in  existence, 
to  invite  him  to  use  its  delaying  time-tables  and  dan- 
gerous rails.  As  it  was,  he  reached  Petersburg  in  the 
course  of  time,  and  in  safety. 

A  detachment  sent  to  Charlottesville,  where  the 
Legislature  of  Virginia  was  in  session,  seized  several 
of  those  most  unmanageable  specimens  of  the  human 
race,  members  of  assembly,  troublesome  enough  when 
let  alone,  but  as  prisoners  wholly  incapable  of  defini- 
tion, exchange,  or  valuation.  The  squad  came  near 
burning  their  fingers  by  taking  the  red-haired  and  red- 
vested  Jefferson,  whose  term  as  Governor  had  expired 
only  two  days  before,  but  around  whose  head  there  yet 


302     THE   COMIC   HKSTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES.. 

lingered  enough  of  the  aureola  of  official  dignity  to 
make  him  worth  several  cart-loads  of  assemblymen. 

For  Cornwallis  himself  the  three  military  fates  — 
Washington,  Eochambeau,  and  Lafayette  —  were  se- 
curely and  steadily  spinning  lines  for  his  entanglement. 
At  Iast4hey  enmeshed  him  at  Yorktown.  Nine  thou- 
sand Americans  and  seven  thousand  Frenchmen  held 
the  nettingwhich,  gathered  in  fold  after  fold,  finally, 
October  19,  1781,  caught  the  whole  shoal, —  Corn- 
wallis, that  voracious  old  pike  which  had  devoured 
scores  of  American  armored  fish,  and  7,000  others. 
In  this  splendid  haul  were  found  235  cannon,  8,000 
small  arms,  and  regimental  colors  enough  to  supply  all 
the  state-houses  for  the  next  sixty-five  years. 

When  Lord  George  Germain  hastened  with  the  dis- 
agreeable and  accelerating  news  to  Lord  North,  the 
premier  raised  his  hands  wildly  in  the  air,  and  ex- 
claimed, with  an  oath  too  big  to  fit  our  Comic  History, 
"  It  is  all  over." 

For  the  first  time,  during  the  last  six  years,  Lord 
North  was  right. 

George  III.  stormed  loudly,  and,  at  a  hint  that 
American  independence  must  follow,  threatened  to 
freight  a  large  boat  with  his  ponderous  heaviness,  and 
be  transported  to  Hanover ;  but  he  soon  concluded  to 
take  another  bucolic  roll  in  the  rich  English  clover, 
and  to  postpone  turning  himself  out  into  the  thin  graz- 
ing lands  along  the  Weser. 

The  American  George  rejoiced  with  temperate  joy, 
thanked  God  for  the  crowning  mercy,  ordered  divine 
service  to  be  performed  throughout  the  camps,  and 
thanksgiving  turkeys  to  be  rendered  to,  and  thanks- 


LAST  TURN   OF   THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WHEEL.     303 

giving  by,  the  troops.  And  so  ended  1781,  as  all  years 
should  end,  with  thanksgiving  and  turkey. 

Christmas  dinners,  or  something  else  in  America, 
had  the  effect  of  turning  the  English  stomach  against 
the  war  ministry  of  Lord  North.  "  Let  us  have  peace," 
piped  the  English  House  of  Commons  to  the  watch  on 
the  deck  of  the  still  fine,  but  somewhat  battered,  Royal 
George.  "  Ay  !  ay  !  "  responded  the  first  mate.  So 
the  ship  was  hove  to,  and  a  gentleman  stepped  down 
the  ladder  let  down  her  sides,  was  rowed  to  the  French 
shore,  and  at  Paris  met  four  American  ex-rebels,  — 
Adams,  Franklin,  Jay,  and  Henry  Laurens. 

These  'fcve  gentlemen,  on  the  30th  of  November, 
1782,  sitting  at  a  round  table  covered  with  green  baize, 
signed  a  preliminary  agreement  for  peace,  which  was 
joyfully  attested  by  many  millions  of  witnesses. 

This  agreement  was  dressed  up  with  new  ribbons 
ten  months  after,  and  then  became  a  fixed,  resolute 
treaty,  —  a  gay,  laughing,  sunny  break  in  our  history, 
—  but  in  the  English  chronicles  a  flinty,  hard,  jagged 
fact,  against  which  the  waves  of  national  pride  long 
broke  sullenly  and  hoarsely.  England  had  sent  one 
hundred  and  twelve  thousand  five  hundred  and  eighty 
four  soldiers  and  twenty-two  thousand  seamen  to  this 
unjust,  successless  war  ;  had  lost  many  thousands  out 
of  their  ranks  ;  had  lost  much  solid,  precious  money  ; 
lost  credit  and  honor,  more  precious  still;  and  now 
at  last  lost  the  colonial  empires  themselves. 

She   had   thus   millions   of  reasons  for   not   bein 


The  Revolutionary  wheel,  which  had  begun  to  slow 
after  the  battle  of  Yorktown,  now  of  course  wholly 


304         THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 


-.    1 


LAST   TURN   OF   THE  REVOLUTIONARY   WHEEL.      305 

stopped.  The  grist  was  ground.  In  it,  it  is  true, 
were  some  hard  colonels,  some  badly  ground,  dyspeptical 
grains,  some  dark  specks  ;  but,  on  the  whole,  the  yield 
was  good,  unbolted  American  family  flour.  Of  course 
the  miller  took  toll.  This  came  out  in  the  shape  of 
debts  for  soldiers'  wages,  for  money  borrowed,  for 
stores  used,  powder  exploded,  and  pensions  in  the  near 
distance  ;  but  still  there  was  a  broad  country  to  gather 
it  from,  reaching  westward  to  the  Mississippi,  north- 
ward to  the  Lakes,  southward  to  the  Gulf  and  Florida, 
and  eastward  to  the  Atlantic.  There  were  indepen- 
dence achieved  by  obstinate  bravery,  right  of  govern- 
ment, right  to  tax  one's  self,  and,  above  all,  the  right 
to  spend  one's  own  taxes,  even  on  useless  officials  and 
handsomely  printed  laws.  And  so,  on  the  whole,  the 
customer  was  well  satisfied  with  his  krge,  healthy, 
unbolted  grist. 


CHAPTEE  V. 

HOW  A  POOR  CONSTITUTION  BROKE  DOWN. 

Every  Community  has  its  Axis  of  Growth.  —  That  of  the  Confederation 
described.  —  Causes  of  the  Distrust  of  Federated  Power.  —  How  the 
States  preferred  to  sew  up  the  Treasury  Pocket  rather  than  allow 
their  own  Agents  to  put  their  Hands  in  it  for  necessary  Funds.  —  Face- 
tious Bills  of  Exchange.  —  The  Shady  and  Sunny  Side  of  Power.  — 
Similarities  and  Dissimilarities  of  the  States.  —  The  Committee  to 
draft  Confederation  Sixteen  Months  over  the  Cold  Nest.  —  The  curious 
Knot-ty  Grub  that  issued.  —  The  Spawn  of  Doubt  put  to  the  Nurse  of 
Jealousy.  —  How  it  was  nursed,  starved,  and  doctored;  and  what  a 
poor  Constitution  it  got,  —  The  Confederate  Scheme  like  a  Pine  Board. 
—  It  could  not  raise  Money,  an  Army,  Credit,  Postage,  Revenue  :  in 
fact,  could  not  raise  itself.  —  The  Comic  Side  of  the  Franking  Privi- 
lege. —  A  desirable  Prohibition.  —  How  the  Grub  became  a  Cater- 
pillar, and  the  Caterpillar  a  Butterfly.  —  A  very  Larky  Phoenix  rises, 
crowing  Yankee  Doodle. 


community,  like  every  individual,  has  its 
A  j  axis  of  growth.  Sometimes  this  axis  is  in  the 
line  of  large,  generous  expansion,  loving,  trustful,  and 
unselfish  ;  sometimes  on  the  crooked  wire  of  involved, 
self-stunting  contradictions,  of  twisting  jealousies,  and 
of  resolutely  resistant  forces,  which  project  crab  wise 
on  all  sides,  and  propel  with  counteracting  momen- 
tum in  all  directions,  and  so  sprawl  out  either  in  bal- 
ancing rest  or  in  a  slight  gain  rearward. 

Of  these  latter  stationary  or  retrograde  and  always 
negative  qualities,  the  Confederation  largely  partook. 
The  committee,  appointed  by  Congress,  June  11,  1776, 
to  draft  a  plan  for  governing  the  thirteen  Colonies, 


HOW  A   POOR   CONSTITUTION  BROKE  DOWN.       307 

shared  in  the  feeling,  indulged  by  the  people  at  large, 
of  apprehension  as  to  the  natural  driftage  of  central 
power  athwart  popular  rights.  They,  like  their  con- 
stituents, were  very  subject,  to  that  political  fever  and 
ague,  a  shivering,  chilly  dread  that  an  American  par- 
liament might  grasp  and  abuse  the  power  of  taxation 
as  the  English  congress  had  done,  and  a  heated,  burn- 
ing fever  whenever  the  possibility  of  legislation  in 
matters  of  religious  faith  was  started  in  any  vein. 
Denying  the  power  of  King  George,  George  Gren- 
ville,  or  any  other  George,  to  put  his  hand  in  their 
pockets,  they  thought  it  logical  —  and  it  was  the 
natural  logic  of  distrust  —  to  refuse  permission  even  to 
their  own  agents,  although  frequently  elected  and  called 
to  account  by  themselves,  to  agree  upon  any  plan  of 
mutual  contribution  for  the  common  good.  Smarting 
under  wrongs  inflicted  in  the  name  of  government, 
our  confederated  progenitors  were  never  able  to  gain 
political  faith  and  strength  enough  to  crawl  out  from 
under  the  shady  side  of  authority  around  to  its  sunny, 
cheery,  beneficent  face. 

The  needs  for  a  Union  were  yet  unfelt.  All  the 
thirteen  Colonies  held  slaves,  all  sloped  to  the  At- 
lantic, and  all,  except  Pennsylvania,  touched  the  sea. 
Their  substantial  agreements  created  as  yet  no  wants  ; 
their  broad  areas  made  them  independent ;  their  slight 
diversities  were  not  so  strong  as  to  require  the  firm 
hand  of  central  power  to  bind  them  within  a  well- 
hooped  circle,  within  which  aggressive  rights  might  be 
so  restrained  as  not  to  become  antagonistically  hostile, 
and  which  might  yet  continue  so  free  that  their  forces 
might  work  together  and  onward  in  large  and  enlarg- 
ing action. 


308     THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  Committee  sat  for  sixteen  months  ;  and  in  No- 
vember, 1777,  the  lumpish,  inert  grub  of  Confederation 
saw  the  light.  A  poor,  weak  grub  it  was,  without 
developed  legs  to  go  on,  without  eyes  to  see  with, 
filmed  over  with  a  gelatinous,  swathing  membrane, 
squirming  in  feeble  inanition,  and  feeling  as  cold  as  a 
tax-bill,  or  the  shake  of  a  cashier's  hand  with  a  doubt- 
ful bank  customer  on  discount  day. 

The  scheme  of  Confederation  was  the  child  of  Doubt, 
put  out  to  the  nurse  of  Jealousy. 

It  was  watched  to  death  by  the  members  of  the 
State  family,  each  taking  its  turn,  and  each  well  pro- 
vided with  the  cold-gruel  theory,  that  what  the  child 
cried  for  was  not  good  for  it,  and  that  what  it  really 
and  always  wanted  was  a  sound  course  of  starvation. 
And  so  starvation  it  got,  with  an  occasional  blue-pill 
administered  by  those  little  teasing  children,  Maryland, 
Kliode  Island,  and  Connecticut,  whose  jealous  preten- 
sions were  of  course  inversely  to  their  size.  No  wonder 
that  the  brat  grew  pale. 

In  a  word,  the  States  were  everything,  the  Confeder- 
ation nothing.  The  powers  of  the  latter  were,  like 
poor  pine  boards,  filled  with  nots.  The  Confederation 
could  not,  of  itself,  levy  taxes ;  it  could  only  cipher 
up  what  each  State  ought  to  pay,  and  then  advise  it  to 
pay  the  sum  stated.  It  could  not  raise  an  army  ;  and, 
amid  the  extra  jealousy  against  a  military  force,  it  was 
hardly  suffered  to  figure  out  the  quotas  of  the  various 
States  which  might,  if  they  saw  fit,  follow  the  advice, 
or  might,  if  they  chose,  disregard  it.  Of  course  the 
States  generally  treated  these  debiting  bills  as  any 
customer  would  a  draft  upon  him,  when  accompanied 


HOW  A   POOR   CONSTITUTION  BROKE  DOWN.       309 

by  an  intimation  that,  although  payment  was  desirable 
to  the  writer,  he,  the  correspondent,  might  pay  or  not, 
as  and  when  he  found  it  convenient.  Without  trem- 
bling as  Felix  did,  they  adopted  the  Roman  governor's 
mode  of  dealing  with  unpalatable  advice,  —  thoughts 
and  suggestions  of  a  judgment  to  come  being  post- 
poned to  a  time  which,  rainbow-like,  never  touched 
them.  The  Confederation  had  no  power  over  exports 
or  imports,  or  the  revenue  therefrom ;  the  States  sit- 
ting along  the  sea-shore,  keeping  each  its  own  straw  to 
suck  its  private  fill  from  the  large  maritime  bowl  in 
front  of  it.  It  had  no  authority  to  punish  treason, 
as  the  States  considered  it  no  crime  to  hurt  or  maltreat 
the  poor  manikin  which  they  had  set  up. 

It  could  not  even  collect  more  postage  on  letters 
than  was  barely  necessary  to  defray  the  expenses  of 
carrying  the  mails.  As  for  the  franking  privilege, 
that  curious  Congressional  levy  on  the  public  treasury, 
comically  supposed  to  be  repaid  to  the  people  by  heavy 
speeches,  very  uncurrent  and  untransportable,  which 
require  all  the  government  levers  to  lift  them  up  to 
the  unwilling  hands  of  their  constituents,  this  privi- 
lege was  as  yet  undiscovered. 

There  was  one  prohibition  which  might,  in  our  time, 
with  great  advantage  to  the  public  interests,  be  even 
extended ;  the  interdict  upon  men  going  to  Congress 
more  than  three  years  out  of  six.  Even  the  three 
years  might  be  profitably  prohibited,  —  an  economy  of 
bad  laws,  bad  speeches,  bad  manners,  and  of  $1,635,000 
annually  paid  for  salaries. 

It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  among  the  stark  cold 
negations  of  the  Confederation  act,  there  were  two 


310     THE   COMIC   HISTORY    OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

warm  affirmative  provisions,  one  securing  to  persons 
of  every  color  equal  rights  in  all  the  States,  the  other 
making  each  man's  conscience  the  teacher  and  judge 
of  his  religious  belief.  These  were  the  two  red  cur- 
rents, the  arterial  blood,  which  kept  alive  the  lumpish, 
footless,  armless,  and  eyeless  grub,  and  preserved  it 
during  the  Revolution,  and  through  the  caterpillar, 
chrysalis  condition  from  1783  to  1787,  until  at  last,  in 
the  latter  year,  it  burst  forth  into  the  glad,  beautiful, 
perfected  butterfly,  the  Constitution,  vital  with  sus- 
taining power,  bright  with  yellow  promises,  and  rising 
joyously  into  the  large  air  of  healthy  freedom. 

The  phosnix  of  the  Confederation,  that  arose  out  of 
its  ashy  bed  very  larky  and  lustily  crowing  Yankee 
Doodle,  was  our  present  Constitution. 


BOOK     FOURTH 

THE   UNITED   STATES. 
1789  TO  18GD  AND  ONWARDS. 


"  Virtutes  ibi  esse  debebunt,  ubi  consensus 
Atque  Unitas  erit." 

Sen.  de  Vit.  Beat.  c.  8. 

"  He  stood 

With  Atlantean  shoulders  fit  to  bear 
The  weight  of  mightiest  monarchies." 

MILTON. 

"  Whose  genius  was  such 
We  scarcely  can  praise  it  or  blame  it  too  much." 

GOLDSMITH. 


•ll 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION. 
1777-1787. 

The  Constitution  as  a  Resort  for  Shoppers  in  Civil  Rights.  —  Every  Kind 
of  Article  to  be  found  either  for  Ordinary  or  Exceptional  Use.  —  The 
Fringe  called  Preamble ;  its  Thread,  Texture,  and  Quality.  —  Counter- 
feit Patterns  and  Simulations  easily  detected.  —  Piles  of  heavy  Cloths 
for  the  Country's  Winter  Use  in  War,  Financial  Storms,  etc.  —  Ex- 
ecutive and  Legislative  Ready-made  Clothing.  —  Judicial  White  Goods. 
—  Hosiery  for  Congressional  Understandings,  swift  or  slow.  — A  Variety 
of  Miscellaneous  Wares:  Contrivances  for  catching  People  with  Colored 
Skins ;  Habeas  Corpus  Non-Suspenders ;  Muzzles  for  violent  or  hungry 
Congressmen;  Handsome  Checks  on  the  Treasury;  Specimens  of  tender 
Gold  and  Silver;  Militia  Uniforms  ;  Padlocks  for  securing  Houses 
against  Searches ;  Jury-Boxes,  Trial  Balances,  and  other  Goods.  —  The 
Sumner  Patent.  —  The  latest  Novelty  to  prevent  Electoral  Black-and- 
White  Suits  from  being  stripped  off.  —  State-Rights  Dresses,  and  strong 
Federal  Out-Fits.  —  Messrs.  Calhoun,  J.  Davis,  Webster,  Clay,  etc.  — 
The  Manufacture  of  bright  Buttons,  called  "  Coins."  —  The  Fifteenth 
Amendment.  —  Doubtful  Packages.  —  Paper  Money  as  a  Substitute  for 
real  Money.  —  Unauthorized  Use  of  the  Constitutional  Bazaar.  — 
Seekers  of  Goods  never  made.  —  Nicholas  Biddle  and  his  Gold  Suit.  — 
Everybody  suited  at  the  Federal  Store.  —  Of  excessively  sharp  and 
dense-headed  Shoppers.  —  How  Articles  are  mistaken.  —  Water-proof 
Goods  for  River  and  Harbor  Dredging  and  for  Lighting  Coasts. — Of 
long  Selvedges,  or  Railroad  Strips,  and  their  wonderful  Elasticity.  — 
Rights  and  Lefts. 

WHAT  Stewart's  New  York  emporium  is  to  shop- 
pers for  goods,  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  is   to  shoppers   for  civil  and   political  rights. 
There  one  may  find  whatever  he  is  in  quest  of,  and 
may  very  often  see  things,  beautiful  in  texture,  color, 
14 


314    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


THE  STATE  TAKES  LEAVE  OF  THE  COLONY. 

and  quality,  which  he  would  never  require,  even  if  he 
lived  as  long  as  his  long-winded  ancestor  Methuselah. 
On  his  very  first  entrance,  he  will  stop  to  look  at  that 
very  handsome  fringe,  "  the  preamble,"  woven  together 
in  such  exquisite  tissue-work.  As  he  examines  it,  he 
will  note  the  quality  of  the  material,  the  even  strands 
"more  perfect  union,"  "justice,"  "domestic  tranquil- 
lity," "  common  defence,"  "  general  welfare,"  "  blessings 
of  liberty,"  braided  together  by  the  deft,  expert,  and 
strong  fingers  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  "  for 
themselves  "  and  "  their  posterity,"  —  a  bit  of  domestic 
hand-weaving  which  has  now  lasted  over  fourscore 


THE  FEDERAL   CONSTITUTION.  315 

years,  and  is  still  bright  in  color,  and,  although  much 
handled  and  tumbled  about,  just  as  good  as  new.  Pat- 
terns have  been  taken  from  it,  and  cheap  imitations  at- 
tempted ;  but  these  latter  are  just  as  easy  of  detection 
as  cottonized  linen,  dyed  hair,  or  carminized  blushes. 

There,  too,  one  finds  readily  and  in  abundance  heavy 
cloths  for  the  country's  wear  through  the  wintry  storms 
of  financial  distress,  foreign  wars,  or  domestic  insurrec- 
tion ;  ready-made  clothing  for  legislative  and  execu- 
tive use ;  white  linen  goods  for  the  judges,  as  stainless 
as  snow,  although  not  quite  as  cheap ;  a  great  variety 
of  under-garments  to  fit  the  powers  of  Congress,  and  a 
large  assortment  of  hosiery  to  encase  with  restrictive 
woof  its  rapid  understandings. 

As  one  advances,  he  finds  a  miscellaneous  collection 
of  rights ;  patent  contrivances  to  give  people  in  one 
State  the  same  expansion,  weight,  and  solidity  as  in 
another  ;  admirably  adjusted  devices  for  catching  per- 
sons with  colored  skins,  when  attempting  to  run  off 
with  them  over  boundary  lines,  —  a  device  ingenious- 
ly stamped  "  labor-saving  machines,"  —  an  article  in 
great  demand  between  1850  and  1861  in  the  southern 
portion  of  the  Union.  On  the  same  counter  lie  habeas 
corpus  non-suspenders,  a  strap  occasionally  called  for 
by  passionate  judges  and  choleric  magistrates ;  tacks, 
which  can  only  be  driven  in  all  over  the  surface  of 
America  up  to  the  same  point;  muzzles  over  legis- 
lative bills  and  hungry  congressmen,  to  prevent  them 
from  pecking  at  the  estates  of  people  politically  de- 
capitated, and  from  whetting  up  the  keen  edge  of  ex 
post  facto  laws ;  handsome  checks  on  the  treasury ; 
good  bills  of  lading,  current  in  all  the  ports  of  the 


316    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Union,  if  at  any  time  introduced  in  any  one  of  them ; 
specimens  of  gold  and  silver,  made  very  tender  in  all 
the  States,  especially  during  a  time  of  plenty,  and  be- 
fore a  war ;  and  a  large  variety  of  odd  gear,  to  prevent 
people  from  getting  into,  or,  if  in,  out  of,  trouble. 

Proceeding  to  the  rear  of  our  Constitutional  bazaar, 
the  shopper  will  find  the  very  latest  styles  and  modes 
of  civil  rights ;  pieces  adapted  to  dress  and  re-dress 
pulpits  and  printing-presses ;  militia  uniforms ;  arms 
without  quarterings ;  padlocks  to  secure  houses  from 
being  entered  and  searched ;  devices  to  keep  property 
from  being  taken  for  public  use  without  proper  pay- 
ment ;  jury-boxes  and  trial  balances. 

But  the  very  latest  article  added  to  this  great  empo- 
rium is  a  curious  contrivance,  said  to  have  been  in- 
vented by  a  Do\vn-Easter  named  Sumner,  for  prevent- 
ing one  man,  even  if  he  be  draped  in  a  mourning  skin, 
from  being  owned  by  another  man.  Of  course  it 
would  strike  any  «ne  but  an  American  as  a  very  need- 
less article,  especially  out  of  place  among  staple  goods, 
and  one  which  ought  never  to  be  called  for  in  a  coun- 
try which  takes  such  pains  and  pride  to  claim  and 
proclaim  that  other  invention  of  a  man  down  South, 
called  Jefferson,  whereby  one  man  is  made  equal  to 
every  other  man.  Still,  it  is  well  known  that  the 
Sumner  unclasping  machine  is  a  very  useful  one,  and 
well  supplies  a  need  long  felt. 

Attempts  are  now  made,  as  we  write,  to  introduce 
into  public  use  another  article,  called  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment,  and  to  put  upon  it  the  Constitutional  pa- 
tent-mark, an  article  which  is  calculated  to  hinder  any 
evilly  disposed  person  from  stripping  off  from  another 


THE   FEDERAL   CONSTITUTION.  317 

at  election  time,  —  a  period  when  a  certain  strange  ra- 
bies seizes  Americans  and  makes  them  inclined  to  tear 
each  other  and  their  clothing,  —  their  electoral  vest- 
ments, or  voting  suits,  especially  if  they  do  not  suit 
them.  The  new  pattern  is  black  and  white,  and  al- 
though it  has  had  as  yet  a  checkered  fate,  —  some 
preferring  it  all  white,  some  all  black,  others  white 
with  a  leaden-colored  border,  —  it  is  thought  by  shrewd 
buyers  that  the  novelty  will  soon  come  into  general 
use.  These  last-named  goods  are  far  from  being  fash- 
ionable at  the  South. 

One  of  the  most  surprising  characteristics  of  our 
fashionable  Constitutional  shopping-place  is,  that  ev- 
erybody finds  here  just  the  article  to  suit  his  taste, 
judgment,  and  even  his  fancy,  whimsical  as  it  may  be. 
If  Mr.  J.  C.  Calhoun  or  Mr.  J.  Davis  wants  a  com- 
plete outfit  for  States  rights,  he  walks  in,  and  has  no 
difficulty  in  finding  it  just  to  his  liking,  and  in  a  con- 
siderable variety  of  shades  and  materials.  He  puts 
his  hand  on  one  of  the  new  styles  marked  "  Article 
X,"  and  is  confirmed  in  his  choice  by  reading  upon  the 
label  the  manufacturer's  description:  "The  powers 
not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the  Constitu- 
tion, nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the  States,  are  reserved  to 
the  States  respectively,  or  to  the  people."  He  turns 
around,  and,  traversing  other  departments,  discovers 
sundry  other  articles  of  like  style  to  match  these. 
He  also  lights  upon  more  gauzy,  thin,  or  fine-spun, 
fleecier  goods  to  throw  around  the  exposed  shoulders 
of  the  States. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  Mr.  D.  Webster  or  Mr.  H. 
Clay  desires  a  thorough  suit  for  the  central  Federal  fig- 


318    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

ure  of  Uncle  Samuel,  lie  is  shown  directly  to  the  sec- 
tions where  he  can  procure  quantities  of  them ;  hats 
to  cover  banking  brains ;  coats  and  vests  to  put  over 
the  inner  works,  to  aid  digestion  and  promote  internal 
improvement ;  pants,  hosiery,  and  boots  to  keep  up 
our  Uncle's  advancing  strides  over  mountains,  plains, 
and  rivers.  Such  customers  are,  of  course,  walked  up 
directly  to  section  eight,  and  there  are  shown  in  a  large 
box  ample  and  well-made  garments  of  the  desired  de- 
scription. On  the  top  of  this  box  the  fabricators  have 
put  this  explanation  :  "  To  make  all  laws  which  shall 
be  necessary  and  proper  for  carrying  into  execution 
the  foregoing  powers." 

It  was  supposed  by  many  of  the  original  members 
of  the  firm,  who  got  up  this  grand  Constitutional  ba- 
zaar, that  Uncle  Sam's  concern  had  the  exclusive  right 
to  make  those  bright,  popular  buttons  called  "  coin," 
or  "  money " ;  but  it  was  discovered  in  a  very  short 
time  that  there  was  an  elastic  provision  in  the  articles 
of  copartnership,  which  allowed  the  individual  mem- 
bers of  the  firm  to  manufacture,  each  on  his  own  ac- 
count, these  shining  disks,  and  even  to  invent  and  put 
forth  for  sale  paper  substitutes,  which  at  length  be- 
came so  much  in  vogue  as  to  drive  the  metallic  article, 
at  times,  wholly  out  of  the  market.  Paper  collars 
have  not  had  a  livelier  run,  nor  damper  shrinkages 
than  these. 

Statements  are  often  put  forth  by  people  sitting  on 
benches  and  having  a  grave,  sometimes  a  grave-clothes 
air,  doubting  the  right  of  the  Federal  store  to  stamp  ex- 
clusively and  to  put  out  for  its  own  particular  profit, 
a  variety  of  things,  kept  there  in  well-locked  sec- 


THE  FEDERAL   CONSTITUTION.  319 

tions;  it  being  claimed  that  the  composing  members 
have  a  concurrent  power  to  make,  stamp,  and  vend  the 
same  goods.  On  some  of  these  points  the  discussion  is 
still  going  on,  and  as  the  partners  are  a  jealous,  sharp 
set,  it  is  not  likely  soon  to  terminate. 

Much  trouble  has  arisen  in  regard  to  a  large  number 
of  bills  of  credit  which  have  been  issued  by,  and  are 
still  outstanding  against,  the  large  Federal  concern. 
Some  have  questioned  their  power  to  manufacture  this 
kind  of  paper  and  make  it  equal  to  hard  coin.  Others 
have  doubted  the  legality  of  the  step  which  the  firm 
took  in  making  this  paper  good  for  certain  purposes, 
and  not  receivable  as  pay  for  certain  kinds  of  debts 
due  to  the  house,  arguing  that  if  coin  was  better  than 
paper,  then  the  paper  could  not  justly  be  made  an 
equivalent ;  and  if  no  better,  then  that  paper  ought  in 
all  cases  to  be  received  as  well  by  the  firm  as  by 
others.  After  much  argument  before  them,  however, 
that  popular  court,  the  ballot,  gave  a  verdict  against 
those  who  so  reasoned,  and  rendered  a  decree  that,  if 
there  were  no  other  good  reasons,  the  arguments  pro 
interesse  suo  and  ad  nccessitatem,  especially  when  im- 
pelled by  the  motor  of  war,  were  too  convincing  to  be 
set  aside,  and  so  legalized  the  discrimination. 

Very  many  people  make  an  unauthorized  use  of  the 
bazaar.  They  go  in  for  articles  so  absurd,  so  trifling, 
or  so  unusual,  that  all  the  clerks  laugh  outright,  as 
soon  as  the  inquiries  are  made.  Some  people,  espe- 
cially members  of  Congress,  candidates  for  office,  small 
lawyers,  raised  by  short  hand-levers  up  towards  a  large 
occasion,  which  they  find  it  difficult  to  reach,  when 
talking  of  the  things  themselves,  their  own  pockets,  or 


320    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

their  chances  of  offices  and  places,  assert,  when  told 
that  such  things  do  not  exist,  that  they  can  find  them 
in  the  old  Constitutional  store. 

Accordingly,  they  post  thither,  and  make  themselves 
ridiculous  or  disagreeable,  by  tumbling  over  and  soil- 
ing the  goods  that  lie  there  in  honest  piles,  to  find 
their  peculiar  article.  Some  of  these  shoppers  last  men- 
tioned  are  very  keen-eyed,  gifted  with  those  optics  spo- 
ken of  by  Hudibras,  which  see 

"  Things  which  are  not  to  be  seen," 

and  fancy  that  they  see,  in  their  mind's  eye,  patterns 
of  what  they  are  after,  when  in  truth  the  patterns  are 
not  at  all  similar.  If  the  goods  found  are  speckled, 
checked,  spotted,  or  figured,  and  the  sample  which 
they  have  brought  has  any  specks,  checks,  spots,  or 
figures  in  it,  bearing  the  most  general  resemblance,  but 
readily  distinguishable  from  the  goods  inspected  by 
any  the  most  careless  observer,  if  disinterested,  they 
hasten  away  and  proclaim  very  loudly  that  the  same 
goods,  of  precisely  the  same  material,  color,  make,  and 
style,  are  found  in  heaps  in  the  Constitutional  shop. 
There  is  nothing  so  sharp  as  such  eyes,  except  the  sin- 
gle eye  to  the  public  good. 

So,  on  the  other  hand,  obtuse,  dense-headed  observ- 
ers, unaccustomed  to  make  distinctions,  rush  to  the 
Constitutional  with  confused  or  ill-defined  recollections 
of  the  patterns  or  styles  they  want,  and  buy  and  bring 
away  packages  of  goods  which,  when  exposed  to  a 
clear  light,  are  at  once  seen  to  be  wholly  dissimilar. 
As  in  large  stores,  some  people  become  confused  by 
the  variety,  and  select  at  random,  or  in  a  perplexed 


THE  FEDERAL   CONSTITUTION.  321 

glamour,  articles  to  match  pieces  at  home  either  in 
color,  texture,  or  quality,  and  assent  with  a  mixed 
mind  to  the  adroit  suggestions  of  the  salesman ;  so  in 
the  various  sections  into  which  our  Constitutional  store 
is  divided  up,  many  good  people,  even  deacons,  vestry- 
men, the  annual  subscriber  to  missionary  papers,  and 
systematic  charity  bestowers,  become,  in  the  shifting 
cross-lights  of  commentaries,  and  remarks  of  story- 
tellers and  others,  as  confused  and  astray  in  their 
notions,  and  lose  their  own  not  over-strong  heads  as 
completely  as  congressmen  at  an  evening  session,  or 
the  President  during  the  closing  hours  of  the  last  night 
of  the  congressional  barbecue. 

There  is  no  store  so  much  talked  about  all  over  the 
United  States  as  this  Constitutional  one  ;  and  there  are 
no  goods  so  generally  used  or  so  popular  as  those  which 
are  either  actually  obtained  there,  or  fancied  to  be  in  it 
for  sale.  Nicholas  Biddle  once  got  a  gold-colored  suit 
there  which  he  wore  in  and  around  the  vaults  of  the 
United  States  Bank,  in  Philadelphia,  from  1816  to  1836; 
but  General  Jackson,  for  various  reasons,  some  of  which 
were  very  peculiar  and  of  a  hickory  color,  others  as 
sound  as  oak,  took  such  a  dislike  to  it,  that  he  finally 
persuaded  the  people  that  it  was  a  very  poor  suit,  and, 
in  fact,  never  came  from  the  Constitutional  store,  but 
was  a  deceptive  imitation  of  goods  there. 

Many  persons  have  gone  to  the  Federal  store,  to  pro- 
cure water-proof  constitutional  goods,  to  wear  in  dredg- 
ing rivers  and  harbors,  in  laying  down  watery  ways 
across  States,  and  when  at  work  on  the  coast,  or  ex- 
posed to  the  chilling  winds  from  State  capitols.  Others 
insist  upon  purchasing  there,  also,  long  selvedges,"  or 
14*  u 


322     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

narrow,  iron-colored  strips,  which  some  declare  to  be 
very  excellent  material  for  binding  States ;  while  oth- 
ers assert  that  it  is  only  calculated  for  hemming  them 
in  uncomfortably.  Some  of  these  strips  have  a  very 
elastic  element  in  them,  and  can  be  made  to  stretch 
in  parallel^  lines  from  Washington  to  the  farthest 
border  of  the  Union.  The  bands,  or  bindings,  which 
they  use,  are  also  wonderfully  elastic,  and  can  be  mul- 
tiplied like  stars  to  the  bewildering  gaze  of  an  enthu- 
siastic drinker. 

On  the  whole,  it  may  be  said,  that  while  this  great 
American  store  contains  piles  of  invaluable  goods,  it  is 
supposed  by  intelligent  persons  to  hold  more  rights 
than  were  ever  left  to  men. 


THE  FEDERAL   CONSTITUTION. 


323 


CHAPTER  II. 

CONSTRUCTION;   OR,  WASHINGTON'S  ADMINISTRATION. 
1789-1797. 

How  the  Thirteen  Colonial  Children  crept  into  their  New  Bed. —  The 
Upholstering  described.  —  Why  Rhode  Island  was  last  in.  — Who 
tucked  her  up.  —  Washington  as  Superintendent,  and  John  Adams 
as  First  Assistant.  —  The  Family  low  in  Credit.  —  Amount  of  their 
Indebtedness  compared  with  ours.  — Washington's  Inaugural.  —  His 
Exemption  from  Office  Beggars,  Committees,  Pugilistic  M.  C.'s.  boring 
Place-Seekers,  enterprising  Donors,  etc.  —  Washington  as  a  Spirit.  — 
His  Capacity  to  select  a  Cabinet.  — Who  they  were.— Of  Henry 
Knox.  —  The  Chief  Justice  and  Attorney-General.  —  Amendments  to 
a  perfect  Constitution.  —  The  Supreme  Court  as  a  Sound,  Seaworthy 
Tribunal.—  Why  States  cannot  be  sued  by  Individuals.  —  How  Gov- 
ernments get  around  paying  Interest  on  Principle.  — Streaks  of  the 
Millennium.  —  Of  the  Public  Debt.  —  Discrimination  among  Cred- 
itors.—  Misfortune  of  being  a  Cisatlantic  Holder  of  American  Bonds. 

—  Alexander   Hamilton's    Notions. —  Washington's    Receptions    and 
Dinner-Parties.  —  The  Political  Color  of  the  President's  Silver  Spoons 
and  Window  Curtains.  —  The  Honeymoon  of  the  new  Government 
disturbed.  —  Ganderous  Long-bills  splash  Washington.  —  The  French 
Revolution  and  its  Conundrums.  —  How  answered  by  Washington  and 
the  Federals;  how  by  Jefferson  and  the  Anti-Federals.  —  The  Cen- 
sus Act  procures  names  without  Owners.  —  The  Naturalization  Laws 
and  their  Pat-riot  Products. —  Polls  and  Polling-Places.  —  A  Sinking 
Fund  that  did  not  sink.  —  How  Vermont  made  the  Thirteen  States  old. 

—  An    Indian   War.  —  Cincinnati    begins.  —  Kentucky   starts.  —  Mis- 
takes about   Bourbon.  —  Washington's  second  Term.  —  What   Genet 
did,  and  how  he  was  done  for.  —  Helpful  Americans.  —  The  Whiskey 
Rebellion  of  1794.  —  The  Year  of  Treaties ;  how  they  enlarged  while 
they  tied  us.  —  Tennessee  the  Sixteenth  State.  —  Nashville  gets  warm. 

—  Washington's  Farewell,  and  its  cheap  Imitations.  —  The  Shades  of 
Office.  — Who  crept  in  and  who  stepped  into  the  Sunshine. 


CONSTRUCTION.  325 

THE  thirteen  colonial  children,  emancipated  from 
parental  mis-government  in  1783,  tired  of  sleep- 
ing together  in  the  same  old,  rickety  confederate  bed, 
which  had  been  hastily  put  together  in  1777,  and 
whose  cords  they  found  so  small  and  hard  as  to  cut 
through  the  thin  mattress  above,  and  so  weak  as  to 
creak  and  threaten  to  go  down  under  them,  whenever 
they  stirred  or  even  spoke  above  a  whisper,  at  last,  in 
1789,  obtained  a  new  first-class  constitutional  bedstead. 
It  was  wide  and  roomy,  with  even,  strong  springs,  and 
was  easy  to  get  in  and  out  of,  as  well  as  very  comely 
in  shape,  and  well  polished  externally. 

This  new  article  was,  however,  not  decided  upon  by 
all  the  thirteen  immediately.  It  was  spoken  for  in 
1787,  and,  during  that  and  the  next  year,  eleven  signi- 
fied their  preference  for  it  over  the  old  tumble-down 
rumbly.  Little  Khody  was  the  baby  in  the  old  family, 
and,  fearing  to  be  overlaid  and  perhaps  smothered  by 
her  larger  bedfellows,  did  not  crawl  under  the  sheets 
of  the  newly  upholstered  bed  until  1790  ;  and  not  un- 
til New  York  and  Virginia  had  agreed  to  be  content 
with  a  fixed  amount  of  bedclothing,  instead  of  claim- 
ing, for  themselves,  that  large  Western  comforter,  those 
earth-colored  strips,  of  the  empire  pattern,  extending 
to  the  Pacific  side  of  the  bed,  and  large  enough  to  cut 
up  into  a  dozen  good-sized  State  counterpanes. 

It  was  not  necessary  that  this  youngster,  —  nor  yet 
North  Carolina,  who  got  in  the  year  before,  —  should 
consent,  in  order  to  complete  the  change  of  arrange- 
ments from  the  old  Confederate  to  the  new  Constitu- 
tional system ;  but  as  it  was  an  affectionate  and  gen- 
erous-hearted family,  there  was  a  general  desire  to 


326    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

conciliate  all  the  members.  And  so  when  little  Rhody 
got  in  and  curled  up,  she  was  joyfully  tucked  in  by 
that  good  old  faithful  American  "  help,"  Washington, 
a  great  favorite,  who  had  been  so  long  in  the  fam- 
ily that  he  was  loved  by  every  one,  and  so  generous 
and  right-minded  that,  although  several  of  the  other 
domestics,  such  as  Major  John  Armstrong  and  others, 
who  had  worked  on  very  low  wrages  with  him  through 
the  war,  proposed  to  him  to  take  the  house  himself 
as  proprietor,  he  indignantly  refused  so  to  use  or 
abuse  the  affectionate  trust  of  the  household. 

Washington  was,  however,  unanimously  chosen  Chief 
Superintendent,  and  our  short,  stout,  resolute  acquaint- 
ance, John  Adams,  whom  we  met  at  the  top  of  the 
hill,  July  4,  1776,  was  made  his  first  assistant. 

The  family  now  set  up  housekeeping.  Like  most 
families  in  the  United  States,  they  were  at  the  outset 
poor.  They  were  especially  low  in  credit;  for  in 
consequence  of  the  issue  by  the  Continental  Congresses, 
during  the  war,  of  about  $300,000,000  of  paper 
money,  its  value  had  so  depreciated  that  it  became  of 
little  use  except  to  line  trunks  or  to  patch  up  cham- 
bers as  ruinous  as  itself.  They  were  also  greatly  in 
debt,  owing  at  home  and  abroad  $  79,463,476,  —  a  debt 
which,  instead  of  being  paid  off  or  even  reduced,  grew, 
in  spite  of  every  economy,  good  judgment,  and  excel- 
lent management,  for  the  next  seventeen  years,  and 
was  not  fully  discharged  until  1824.  This  debt 
amounted  to  about  nineteen  dollars  per  head  for 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  of  all  colors  in  the 
United  States  at  that  period.  Still,  they  were  not  in 
circumstances  as  discouraging  as  are  we,  their  de- 


CONSTRUCTION.  327 

scendants,  eighty  years  later ;  for,  estimating  our  popu- 
lation now  at  thirty-eight  millions,  each  man,  woman 
and  child  now  owns  a  right  to  pay  as  his  share  of 
the  national  debt,  sixty-eight  dollars,  besides  a  large, 
comfortable  sum  for  State,  county,  city,  and  town 
indebtedness,  which  never  figured  themselves  upon 
the  purses  or  imaginations  of  our  golden-aged  ances- 
tors. This  latter  ownership  is  so  much  the  more 
wonderful  as  it  represents  shares  in  obligations,  not 
wrought  from  outlays  of  blood  or  money  in  the  coun- 
try's service,  but  blood  and  money  sucked  by  corpo- 
rate and  private  straws  from  our  ever-troubled  and 
ever-bubbling  public  treasuries. 

Washington,  after  a  laborious  journey,  reached  New 
York,  and,  on  the  30th  of  April,  1789,  took  the  oath  of 
office  as  President,  on  the  spot  now  covered  by  the 
United  States  Treasury  in  Wall  Street.  The  bulls  and 
bears  of  that  day,  —  mere  calves  and  cubs,  —  not 
strengthened  by  the  pushing  horns  and  large  squeezing 
powers  which  have  added  such  force  to  their  descend- 
ants, might  have  heard,  in  the  intervals  of  their 
rough  play,  the  solid,  honest,  heart-felt  words  of  his 
Inaugural,  in  which,  among  other  things,  he  uttered 
those  now  strange,  old-fashioned  wishes  and  expecta- 
tions, that  "  all  employed  in  the  administration  of  the 
Government  would  execute  faithfully  and  with  suc- 
cess the  functions  allotted  to  their  charge."  -^ 

o 

No  crowds  of  patriotic  office-seekers  stepped  over 
the  sills  of  the  new  President.  Quires  and  tons  of  pa- 
pers, now  quadrienially  rolled  into  the  Presidential  ware- 
house, containing  uncounted  autographic  testimonials 
to  the  transcendent  abilities  and  spotless  purity  of  at 


328     THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

least  one  man  in  thirty  of  our  entire  population  for 
suffering  places,  were  then  left  to  the  innocent  uses  of 
book-keepers  and  book-makers.  We  search  in  vain 
for  any  records  of  enterprising  committees,  State  or 
county,  pressing  upon  the  uninformed  intelligence 
of  the  first  office  appointer  the  names  of  persons, 
otherwise  left  in  native  obscurity,  for  Cabinet  seats 
and  responsible  missions,  which  might  possibly  in 
thoughtless  liberality  turn  the  drippings  of  their 
high  eaves  into  their  own  hungry  pails.  So  far  as 
our  examination  has  discovered,  there  were  no  old 
battered  political  hulks,  their  rigging  split  by  the 
gales  of  speculation  or  the  contrary  winds  of  local 
indignation,  which  put  into  the  Presidential  port  in 
stress  of  weather. 

Gentlemen  waited  to  be  sent  for,  and  did  not  bore 
through  Washington's  bedroom  wall  to  present  hand- 
some reminders  of  services  to  be  yet  gratefully  per- 
formed, or  to  leave  their  photographs  and  a  solar 
microscope,  in  order  that  he  might  by  the  latter  descry 
something  in  the  former  and  in  their  originals. 

Could  that  modest,  slow-minded  chief  be  now  per- 
mitted, through  the  conjury  of  a  medium,  to  sit  by 
the  side  of  his  successors,  during  the  honeymoon  of 
their  official  marriages  to  the  state,  and  see  the  proces- 
sion of  great  men  for  whom  offices  wait  pass  by  with 
their  directories  of  certificates  to  high  intellectual 
power  and  eminent  fitness  for  —  everything  official, 
he  would  certainly  divide  his  surprise  between  two 
great  convictions,  —  the  scandalous  waste  to  which  un- 
claimed virtue  runs  in  this  prodigal  land,  and  the  terri- 
ble contrasts  between  all  the  past  performances  of  the 
ins  and  the  easy,  liberal  promises  of  the  outs. 


CONSTRUCTION.  329 

President  Washington  had  no  difficulty,  even  unaid- 
ed by  pugilistic  M.  C.'s  or  other  metallic  "  rings,"  in 
selecting  gentlemen  to  fill  the  three  newly  created  execu- 
tive departments  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Treasury,  and  War. 
Thomas  Jefferson,  forty-six  years  old,  was  requested 
to  assist  in  managing  our  foreign  relations  and  friends. 
Alexander  Hamilton,  in  his  thirty-second  year,  was  so- 
licited to  pump  something  into  that  very  dry  cistern, 
the  treasury.  To  the  red-leaved  portfolio  of  war  was 
summoned  General  Henry  Knox,  —  the  Sherman  of 
the  Eevolution.  It  was  thought  that  the  man  who 
had,  in  times  of  Revolutionary  discontent,  wisely  al- 
layed the  complaints  of  an  army  whose  courage  in  the 
field  he  could  nobly  stimulate,  and  who  had  stroked 
the  right  way  the  rising  fur  of  a  disbanded  soldiery, 
could  deal  justly  with  the  approaching  pension  lists, 
and  would  fairly  adjust  the  burdens  of  the  seven  lean 
years  of  war,  to  and  through  the  many  rank  and  good 
years  which  now  appeared  in  the  visions  of  our  Ameri- 
can Pharaohs.  The  new  Secretary  felt,  in  taking  his 
place  on  the  war  bench,  that  he  was  summoned  to  a 
sort  of  military  coroner's  inquest  on  the  dead  body  of 
the  late  Eevolution,  which  had  served  well  in  active 
duty,  but  which,  like  every  such  thing  in  our  hurrying 
country,  —  old  people,  worn-out  utensils,  and  other 
ex-useful  machines,  —  was  considered  a  respectable 
encumbrance. 

To  the  post  of  chief  justice  of  the  newly  created 
Supreme  Court  President  Washington  nominated  John 
Jay,  and  for  Attorney-General,  Edmund  Randolph  of 
Virginia.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  President,  Secre- 
tary of  State,  and  Attorney-General  were  all  from  the 


330     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

same  State,  —  the  greatest  Cabinet-making,  State- 
bureau  manufactory  in  the  Union.  If  Connecticut, 
Pennsylvania,  or  North  Carolina  sent  any  delegates  to 
the  President  to  remonstrate  against  the  appointment 
of  two  gentlemen  from  the  same  State,  the  reporters 
of  that  time  have  shunned  the  bare  mention  of  it. 

Nothing  on  earth,  not  even  in  the  United  States, 
is  perfect ;  and  in  the  United  States  especially  things 
most  perfect  are  always  in  order  to  be  amended. 
"NVithin  the  very  first  year  of  the  ratification  of  the 
Constitution,  ten  amendments  were  proposed  and 
carried,  making  it  an  old  knife  with  new  blades,  and 
finishing  it  up  into  what  some  people,  with  great 
novelty,  proclaim  it  to  be,  the  most  perfect  instrument 
ever  invented. 

The  keel  of  the  Supreme  Court  was  laid  in  1789  ; 
and  the  vessel,  launched,  well  officered,  and  manned, 
provided  with  new  spars,  anchors,  and  compass,  was 
despatched  from  port  to  ride  the  turbulent  seas 
of  maritime  strife  and  constitutional  conflict,  and  to 
override  laws  and  treaties  which  drift  athwart  the  path 
of  the  Constitution.  By  and  in  it  States  could  origi- 
nally be  pursued  ;  but*  after  submitting  for  about  fifty 
years  to  the  chase  of  individual  plaintiffs,  the  States, 
headed  by  Georgia,  roused  to  a  sovereign  indignation 
and  ruffled  pride  by  being  compelled  to  answer  for 
grievances  inflicted  by  themselves  on  Indians,  negroes, 
white  persons,  and  such  trash,  procured  the  passage 
of  a  jealous  amendment,  relieving  them  from  such 
embarrassments.  Beautiful  is  the  theory  that  States 
can  do  no  wrong  to  their  own  citizens.  Millennarian 
is  the  assumption  that  they  are  so  ready  to  spring  to 


CONSTRUCTION.  331 

their  loads  of  duty,  that  no  judicial  whip,  with  a  snap- 
per of  judgment  and  execution/is  necessary  to  quick- 
en their  slackening  consciences.  As  a  beautiful  corol- 
lary from  these  delightful  premises,  is  the  most  com- 
fortable practice  of  governments  not  to  pay  interest  on 
claims  against  themselves,  however  hoar  with  age ;  for 
the  government  assumes  to  itself  the  virtue  of  being 
always  ready,  as  ihefons  et  origo  justitcc,  to  pay,  and 
is  presumably  always  pressing  its  offers  to  pay  upon 
its  creditors. 

At  certain  points  we  now  touch  the  millennium. 

At  the  next  session  of  Congress,  in  1790,  Hamilton 
presented  a  report  on  that  subject  which,  like  the 
poor,  is  always  with  us,  —  the  public  debt.  Of  course 
every  one  thought  that  it  was  right  to  pay  the  credit- 
ors who  were  fortunate  enough  to  live  in  Europe,  who 
had,  at  whatever  discount,  taken  our  promises  ;  but  a 
great  many  people  with  caoutchouc  principles  doubted 
whether  men  silly  enough  to  be  born  on  this  side  the 
Atlantic  had  as  good  a  right  to  be  paid  ;  just  as  some 
discriminate  between  their  autographs  affixed  to  notes 
held  by  their  friends,  —  leaving  such  to  the  mercy  of 
blood,  —  and  those  held  by  strangers,  which  they  de- 
spatch from  unpleasant  remembrances  by  payment. 
Hamilton  recognized  no  such  thin,  veneering  logic 
over  parts  of  the  public  chest;  and  he  was  honestly 
supported  by  Congress  and  their  makers. 

Philadelphia  was  made  the  national  capital  for  the 
rest  of  the  century ;  and  here,  for  the  coming  seven 
years,  Washington's  weekly  receptions  on  Tuesdays, 
and  his  dinner-parties  on  Thursdays,  created  a  stir 
among  the  disciples  of  Penn,  and  caused  much  green- 


332   THE  come  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

looking  ink  to  be  shed  from  cavilling  pens  all  through 
the  country.  Like  congregations  which  look  with  a 
keen-edged  criticism  upon  the  social  movements  of 
their  clergymen,  the  people  thus  early  began  to  peer 
into  the  green-room  of  the  President's  mansion,  to 
count  the  silver  spoons,  to  feel  of  the  window-curtains, 
and  to  compare  their  silken  qualities  favorably  with 
their  own  hangings,  and  the  qualities  of  the  Presiden- 
tial tenant,  as  thereby  affected,  unfavorably  with  their 
own.  A  democratic  people  prefer  to  occupy  the 
green-room  themselves. 

The  honeymoon  of  our  newly  wedded  constitu- 
tional government  was  not  all  roseate.  Through  the 
press  a  wonderful  amount  of  good  advice  and  double- 
tongued  compliment  was  already  given  to  the  old  gen- 
tleman, who  was  not  likely  to  forget  all  the  pecca- 
dillos he  had,  and  to  wonder  why  he  had  been  re- 
strained from  the  easy  commission  of  others  which  he 
had  not  committed. 

The  French  Revolution  had  now  begun  its  series  of 
bloody  conundrums ;  and,  not  content  with  posing  its 
European  circle  of  listeners  with  perplexing  questions, 
crossed  the  Atlantic,  and  thrust  upon  the  administra- 
tion and  demanded  immediate  answers  to  some  very 
bothering  acrostics  and  puzzles.  The  grand  riddle 
which  they  prided  themselves  upon,  and  required  to 
be  first  answered,  might  be  stated  in  the  rule-of- 
three  form  thus :  If  France,  with  a  population  of 
seventeen  millions,  assisted  America  to  gain  her  inde- 
pendence from  1778  to  1783,  what  aid  should  America, 
with  a  population  of  3,927,827,  give,  in  1790,  to  the 
Constituent  Assembly,  assuming  to  act  for  France, 


CONSTRUCTION.  333 

against  the  monarchical  adherents  of  Louis  XVI.  and 
the  turbulent  guillotining  mob,  struggling  up  into 
fierce,  resentful  power  under  Eobespierre,  Danton,  and 
Desmoulins  ?  This  riddle  was  differently  guessed,  by 
the  leading  members  of  our  government.  Washing- 
ton, Adams,  Hamilton,  and  Jay,  now  recognized  as  the 
leaders  of  a  party  for  the  first  time  called  the  Federal, 
put  in  the  ready,  safe,  and  wise  answer,  "  None "  ; 
while  Jefferson  and  Eandolph,  in  the  government,  and 
Madison,  Gallatin,  and  young  Edward  Livingston,  out 
of  it,  —  now  the  heads  of  the  anti-Federal  party, — 
spelled  out  from  their  general  love  of  liberty  and 
sympathy  for  those  struggling  against  monarchical 
power,  without  regard  to  international  rights  or  home 
duties,  the  response,  "  All  that  we  can." 

Of  course  much  could  be  said  on  each  side,  and  of 
course  much  was  said ;  for  the  Boston  "  News-Letter  " 
had  now  a  very  vivacious  following  all  over  the  thir- 
teen States,  many  of  which  barked  in  chorus,  even  at 
the  majestic  figure  of  Washington.  Very  hard  names, 
too,  and  even  imputations  of  felonious  attempts  upon 
the  person  of  Liberty  herself,  facetiously  assumed  by 
party  zeal  to  be  impersonated  in  the  last  uppermost 
French  faction,  were  hissed  out  against  the  grand  old 
chief  of  the  nation  by  those  long-billed,  ganderous 
persons,  who,  in  the  warm  days  of  politics,  paddle 
around  in  dirty  pools  and  splash,  with  noisy  uproar, 
the  black  ooze  upon  the  cleanest  and  purest  who  pass 
by. 

Thus  even  the  golden  age  had  ugly  quartz  and  soil- 
ing dirt  interspecking  it. 

Congress,  during  the  same  session  of  1790,  passed 


334     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

the  first  act  for  counting  the  people  of  the  United 
States,  —  an  enumeration  which,  being  paid  for  in 
certain  years  by  the  number  of  names  taken,  has 
sometimes  resulted  in  "  counting  one's  chickens  before 
they  were  hatched,"  —  the  census-paper  containing 
more  names  than  owners  of  them. 

A  law  was  also  passed  setting  in  motion  that  large 
machine  for  manufacturing  voters,  commonly  called  a 
Naturalization  Act,  whereby  -a  singular  pat-riot  pav- 
ing is  turned  out,  by  which  our  polling-places  are 
Mclrishized  with  some  very  curious  bricks,  and  our 
polls  sometimes  are  made  to  suffer  by  brickbats. 

A  fund  was  likewise  established  for  sinking  the  na- 
tional debt ;  but  like  the  Irishman's  cork  contrivance, 
put  on  to  enable  him  to  drown  himself,  the  sinking 
fund,  in  practice  under  the  statute  device,  became  so 
buoyant  that  for  several  years  the  debt  floated  up- 
wards instead  of  downwards. 

The  year  1791  was  signalized  by  the  birth  of  Ver- 
mont, as  a  State,  into  the  Union,  —  a  family  event 
which  at  once  added  many  venerable  years  and  an 
historic  solidity  to  the  original  members,  who  thence- 
forward became  "The  Old  Thirteen."  A  national 
bank  was  also  ushered  into  existence,  and  was  care- 
fully wet-nursed  by  Hamilton,  the  government  lend- 
ing it  $  2,000,000,  or  one  fifth  of  its  capital,  —  a  very 
comfortable  christening  present. 

An  Indian  war  which  had  broken  out  the  preced- 
ing year  within  the  present  limits  of  Ohio,  —  as  if  to 
remind  the  country  of  its  old  irritating  eruptions,  — 
raged  with  some  violence  through  1791,  reddening  in 
spots  into  a  rash  and  producing  some  congestion  of 


CONSTRUCTION.  335 

officers  at  military  head-quarters.  General  St.  Clair, 
marching  northwards  with  two  thousand  men,  from 
Fort  Washington,  the  future  Cincinnati,  then  con- 
sisting of  a  rude  stockade  surrounded  by  a  few  wattled 
huts,  and  containing  not  exceeding  thirty  white  set- 
tlers, the  oldest  not  having  been  there  three  years, 
penetrated  a  district  then  obscure,  but  now  even  called 
Dark  County,  where  he  was  disagreeably  surprised  by 
a  party  of  Indians,  and  lost  nearly  three  fourths  of 
'his  troops.  The  war  of  course  became  chronic,  linger- 
ing along  until  1795,  when  it  was  finally  got  under  by 
General  Anthony  Wayne,  the  old  stormer  of  Stony 
Point. 

Kentucky,  wrought  out  of  a  small  Boone  settlement, 
in  1769,  came  forward  in  1792,  and  was  welcomed  as 
the  fifteenth  State.  Some  wavy-notioned  people  im- 
agine that  her  Bourbon,  reinforcing  her  courage  and 
spirits,  emboldened  her  to  make  this  early  application  ; 
but  this  is  a  mistake  which  sober  history  is  glad  to 
correct. 

Washington,  although  annoyed  by  the  ganderous 
long-bills  for  his  steady  adherence  to  the  neutrality 
of  his  country  between  the  raging  factions  that  were 
now  quarrelling  over  the  sanguinary  conundrums,  put 
forth  by  the  civil  war  in  France,  finally  consented, 
against  his  own  wishes,  to  become  a  candidate  for 
re-election  as  President.  His  consent  wras  unani- 
mously decreed  to  be  the  popular  wish  by  the  elec- 
toral colleges.  John  Adams,  less  fortunate  than  his 
chief,  was  content,  however,  with  seventy-seven  votes 
out  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven,  the  other  fifty 
being  given  to  the  Democratic  candidate,  George  Clin- 
ton of  New  York. 


336     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

About  a  month  after  the  second  inauguration  of 
Washington,  in  1793,  that  lively  little  Frenchman, 
Edmond  Charles  Genet,  somewhat  excited  by  the  revo- 
lutionary dance  about  the  scaffold  of  Louis  XVI.,  and 
the  rather  wild  scenes  around  the  revolutionary  tribu- 
nal in  Paris,  capered  over  on  a  visit  to  the  people  of 
this  country,  and  landed  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina. 
Although  commissioned  by  the  French  Convention,  now 
the  subject  of  its  bloody  master  Eobespierre,  as  a  Min- 
ister to  our  government,  Monsieur  Genet  took  upon  his 
arrival  a  sudden  fancy  to  aquatic  sports,  and  despatched 
on  his  own  hook  several  cruisers  to  fish  in  the  troubled 
waters  of  the  Atlantic  for  any  English,  Spanish,  or 
Dutch  flying-fish  that  could  be  caught.  The  old 
American  Squire  did  not  at  all  relish  this  international 
fishing-party,  which  proposed  to  use  American  lines, 
hooks,  sinkers,  and  bait  for  the  benefit  of  French 
packers.  Kindly  but  firmly  he  requested  M.  Genet's 
forwarders  to  order  him  back  again.  There  have 
always  been  Americans,  born  with  magnifying  specta- 
cles fastened  firmly  on  their  noses,  by  which  every 
form  of  freedom,  individual  or  national,  spelt  out  to 
them  a  clear  license  to  help  any  party,  fraction,  or 
entirety  of  a  people  fighting,  or  claiming  to  fight, 
against  the  old  governing  power.  "  Wherever  you  see  a 
crown,  hit  it,"  is  their  one  niotto.  In  April,  1793, 
this  class  had  many  representatives,  who  thought  that 
the  French  gentleman  and  his  fishing-parties  were  all 
right. 

In  1794  a  Whiskey  Eebellion  arose,  not  in  Ken- 
tucky nor  among  the  Bourbonites,  but  in  Pennsyl- 
vania. This  insurrection  defied  for  some  time  the 


CONSTRUCTION.  337 

cautionary,  expostulating,  and  well-sealed  proclama- 
tions of  the  President;  but  when  the  sharp  military 
drum-beat,  backed  by  fifteen  thousand  militia,  with 
well-set  bayonets,  was  heard  in  the  western  part  of 
the  State,  its  leaders  and  their  weak  followers  reeled 
back  into  quiet  and  submission.  Nothing  so  much 
shows  the  simplicity  of  that  golden  age  of  the  Kepub- 
lic  as  this  resistance  to  a  whiskey  tax.  In  our  more 
debased  but  keener  times,  people  distil  much  comfort 
from  a  heavy  tax  —  far  heavier  than  that  of  1794  — 
through  taps  and  tubes  placed  in  the  obnoxious  arti- 
cle, which  is  led  off  and  around  so  circuitously  and 
ingeniously  as  hardly  to  know  where  it  is  going, 
until  all  of  a  sudden  it  falls  plump  in  large  coin 
within  the  well-adjusted  pockets  of  the  non-complain- 
ing manufacturer.  Instead  of  getting  up  insurrections 
in  Pennsylvania  against  the  high  excise,  he  now  forms 
combinations  at  Washington  to  raise  it  higher. 

The  year  1795  was  the  era  of  treaties,  —  establish- 
ing diplomatic  lines  to  England,  —  which  ever  since 
the  peace  of  1783  had  been  uneasily  bobbing  up  and 
down,  neither  fishing  nor  cutting  bait ;  to  Spain, 
whose  American  possessions  of  Florida  and  Louisiana 
were  thereby  staked  and  roped  off  from  our  greedy 
boundaries  ;  to  the  dark  Dey  of  Algiers,  whose  corsairs 
were  thus  enmeshed  in  the  silken  nets ;  and,  finally, 
to  the  Northwestern  Indian  tribes,  who,  as  usual,  gave 
us  a  large  piece  of  territory  for  a  little  piping  peace 
with  hot  embers  on  the  top.  Through  the  Spanish 
treaty  flowed,  and  ever  since  has  continued  to  flow  for 
us,  the  wide-elbowed  Mississippi.  The  exertion  of 
signing  it  exhausted  the  power  of  Spain  in  North 
15  v 


338     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 


CONSTRUCTION.  339 

America;  for  five  years  later  she  had  not  vitality 
enough  to  hold  either  of  these  possessions  against 
Napoleon,  and  the  orange  and  sugar  States  fell  out  of 
her  ever-relaxing  hand  into  the  clutching  and  restless 
fingers  of  France.  In  1796,  Tennessee,  making  the 
sixteenth  State,  was  welcomed  into  the  household. 
Its  capital,  Nashville,  settled  in  1779,  contained  only 
a  few  cabins  ;  but  the  folds  of  the  Cumberland  wanned 
them  rapidly  into  life. 

Washington,  then  sixty-four  years  of  age,  announced 
in  September,  1796,  his  intention  to  retire  to  the 
sunshine  of  private  life.  His  farewell  was  the  bless- 
ing of  a  ripe  sage  upon  a  sorrowing  people.  It  was 
none  the  less  genuine,  rich,  and  good,  because  comi- 
cally imitated  by  a  few  of  his  successors.  Even  An- 
drew Johnson's  did  not  belittle  it. 

Several  gentlemen,  it  was  discovered,  had  a  fancy  to 
try  the  official  shades  which  the  great  American  was 
so  glad  to  quit.  Of  course  Virginia  supposed  that 
the  rotation  in  the  office  should,  like  charity,  begin  at 
home.  Such,  too,  was  the  opinion  of  sixty-eight  elec- 
tors ;  but  as  seventy-one  disagreed  with  them,  the 
short,  stout,  well-grained  "  column  of  Congress  "  was 
transferred,  for  the  four  following  years,  into  the  ex- 
ecutive post. 


CHAPTEE  III. 

OLD  FAMILY  PORTRAITS. 

Modern  Photographic  Albums  like  Ancient  Roman  Simulacra.  —  The  Pleas- 
ure of  looking  at  the  Likenesses  of  Friends.  —  The  Portraits  of  our 
Fore-Fathers.  —  Our  dear  old  Great-  Grandfather  GEORGE  WASHING- 
TON. —  His  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  Original  Portraits.  —  His 
unique  Character;  of  the  same  Size  all  the  Way  up.  —  His  Manners 
and  Characteristics.  —  How  the  Eighteenth  Century,  so  long  mated, 
refused  to  survive  him.  —  Our  Great-Grand  and  good  Mother  MARTHA 
WASHINGTON.  —  The  Resemblance  between  her  and  a  Bowl  of  ripe 
Strawberries  and  Cream.  —  Her  Pride.  —  What  Qualities  were  corseted 
in  her  Bosom.  —  Our  favorite  Uncle,  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  —  How 
the  Sky  got  into  his  Face  and  how  it  stays  charged.  —  Looks  like  an 
hereditary  Director  of  all  the  Estates.  —  A  born  Trustee.  —  What  an 
idea  Burns  might  have  got  of  him  in  1774,  and  how  expressed  it.  — 
Of  our  Aunt,  MRS.  JAMES  MADISON;  and  what  a  fine  Lady  she  was.  — 
Her  careful  Dress  and  Manners.  —  Impressive  but  patronizing.  —  How 
Time  forgot  her,  and  the  Years  ran  on  un-notched.  —  The  forty  Years 
she  acted  as  Presidentess.  —  PATRICK  HENRY  described  in  Dress, 
Person,  shooting  Game,  and  taking  Audiences.  —  Our  dear  Visitor, 
GENERAL  LAFAYETTE;  his  Difficulties  in  reaching  us;  his  noble  Bride; 
his  Embarkation  at  a  Spanish  Port;  his  Labors  here;  his  two  subse- 
quent Visits,  and  how  he  survived  Hand-shaking  and  Kissing.  —  About 
JOHN  JAY  and  his  Wife  SALLIE  LIVINGSTON.  —  How  they  lived  and 
what  he  became.  —  Glances  at  ISRAEL  PUTNAM  and  his  expressive 
Face;  at  NATHANIEL  GREENE  and  his  square,  Quaker  Character;  at 
the  Telescopic  Eyes  of  FRANCIS  MARION,  with  a  Dash  at  his  soldierly 
Qualities.  —  The  Effigies  of  the  WISE  MEN.  —  General  Sketches  of  our 
Heroes  and  Heroines.  —  A  Heart  Delineation  of  the  Mothers,  Wives, 
and  Sisters  of  the  Men  of  the  Revolution. 


indeed  must  be  the  heart,  colder  than  any 
which  pendulates  in  the  readers  of  this  History, 
that  does  not  warm  up  pleasantly  when  carried  by  its 


OLD   FAMILY   PORTRAITS.  341 

owner  into  what  is  wisely  called  in  the  country  "  the 
living-room,"  and  there  obeying  the  electrical  summons 
of  the  eye,  wanders  with  it  lovingly  through  the  pages 
of  a  family  photographic  album. 

The  elder  Eomans  had  a  chamber,  placed  in  the  in- 
nermost part  of  the  house,  devoted  to  the  images  of 
the  departed  members  of  the  family ;  images  named 
after,  but  not  always  likenesses  of,  those  who  had  led 
the  way  in  the  family  history.  So  great  was  their 
reverence  for  these,  so  intimate  the  relation  main- 
tained with  them,  that,  on  the  departure  or  return  of 
any  of  the  household,  these  silent  figures  were  saluted 
with  the  same  affection  as  the  living. 

The  family  photographic  album  is  the  modern  cham- 
ber in  which  are  kept  our  simulacra.  Enter  it  as  often 
as  we  may,  scan  as  often  as  we  choose  its  portraitures, 
we  never  survey  with  indifference,  and  rarely  without 
better  and  tenderer  feelings,  these  mute,  dear  faces. 

Just  as  dear,  just  as  touching  to  our  national  feel- 
ings, sensibilities,  and  emulous  gratitude,  just  as  in- 
structive to  head  and  heart,  are  the  cherished  and 
beloved  features  of  our  national  forefathers.  Turn  we 
then  a  few  leaves  with  interest,  perchance  with  profit. 

An  instinctive  delicacy  places  the  elders  at  the  head 
of  the  procession. 

Of  course  the  very  first  in  the  book,  as  in  our  hearts, 
is  the  dear,  good  face  of  our  great-great-great-grand- 
father, GEORGE  WASHINGTON.  How  well  we  all  know 
it.  One  hundred  and  twenty-eight  original  portraits 
were  taken  of  him,  between  1770,  when  he  was  thirty- 
eight  years  old,  and  1796,  when  he  was  sixty-four,  by 
various  painters,  from  the  elder  Peale  to  Sharpless. 


342    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

The  statue  of  Houdon,  ordered  by  Virginia  in  1785, 
and  finished  in  1788,  perpetuates  in  marble,  to  its  vis- 
itors at  Eichmond,  as  its  engraved  copies  have  made 
familiar  to  all,  the  full-length  majestic  figure  and  port 
of  the  wise,  thoughtful,  and  careful  General  Yet  nu- 
merous as  are  the  likenesses,  multiplied  by  various 
art  processes,  and  scattered  through  parlors,  bedrooms, 
sheds,  cabins,  and  books,  we  instantly  recognize  and 
instinctively  love  the  noble  features  of  our  dear  old 
grandfather.  Very  grave  he  is,  very  sedate,  as  if  he 
was  thinking  how  it  was  best  to  settle  in  life  some  of 
his  large  household.  His  thoughts  seem  so  earnest 
and  weighty  that  we  cannot  interrupt  them.  Good 
and  humane  as  is  the  face,  we  cannot  bounce  in,  leap 
upon  his  high  knees,  pull  lovingly  his  long  hair,  and 
then  scamper  away  with  a  sense  of  unspoken  forgive- 
ness in  our  thumping  hearts.  0  no  !  There  is  an  awe 
in  his  presence,  benevolent  as  it  is,  a  width  of  respon- 
sibility in  his  thought-beaming  face,  which  stills  and 
hushes  us.  Very  reserved  and  calm,  seldom  volunteer- 
ing a  remark,  never  a  laugh,  for  mere  entertainment, 
he  makes  ordinary  conversation  appear  like  empty 
chattering.  Yet  ever  gracious  is- lie,  ever  gentle,  well- 
bred,  and  self-contained.  His  reticence  is  not  sour, 
but  thoughtful,  his  silence  the  waiting  upon  a  large 
utterance.  Intent  and  earnest  after  something  he 
always  seems.  Even  in  his  relaxation  from  formal 
work,  and  when  least  occupied,  he  seems  like  a  good 
fisherman  sitting  on  the  bank,  carefully  watching  the 
float,  and  fixed  upon  securing  the  nibbles. 

A  noble  face !  just  the  frontispiece  to  a  great  His- 
tory, the  preface  to  an  Encyclopaedia  of  Moral  Philos- 


OLD   FAMILY   PORTRAITS.  343 

opliy  and  Political  Eights,  the  trunk  of  a  large  genea- 
logical tree,  the  grandfather  of  a  large,  proud  family. 

Stories  we  have  of  his  boyhood ;  but  they  do  not 
strike  or  stick  to  us  as  accounts  of  a  boy.  Even  when 
cutting  down  the  cherry-tree,  and  then  scorning  the 
boy's  ordinary  deception  in  regard  to  the  author  of  the 
deed ;  when  mastering  the  blooded  horse,  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  animal's  life,  and  then  hastening  to  avow 
to  his  stern  but  just  mother  his  exclusive  agency  in 
the  fatal  conquest,  —  he  seems  the  same  calm,  staid, 
mature  impersonation  of  heroic  Truth,  as  when  he 
stalks  with  longer  strides  through  a  nation's  history. 

Some  naturalists  tell  us  that  the  trunk  of  the  tree 
does  not  lose  its  bulk  as  it  grows  upward  ;  but  that,  if 
we  measure  the  tapering  trunk  and  its  outspreading 
branches,  we  shall  find  that  together  they  form  the 
same  size  and  weight  throughout.  So  Washington,  if 
viewed  in  sections,  appears  of  equal  size,  dimensions, 
and  compacted  force  in  each.  As  a  boy  wise,  grave, 
and  truthful ;  large  in  frame,  of  unusual  strength,  but 
gentle  in  its  use  ;  from  books  learning  little,  from  men 
much,  from  out-door  life  its  large,  fresh,  wholesome, 
healthy  activity,  and  wide  breadths  of  suggestion.  As 
a  young  man  unweariedly  industrious,  unmistakably 
honest,  impressing  all  with  his  oak-like  qualities ; 
carefully  and  perfectly  accomplishing  whatever  he  un- 
dertook, whether  engaged  in  surveying  a  farm,  keeping 
a  journal,  or  supplying  by  study  and  observation  defi- 
ciencies in  education  which  his  own  good,  well-balanced 
sense  had  discovered ;  loving  honestly,  and  honestly 
describing  in  verse  his  heart  affection  for  his  "  lowland 
beauty."  As  an  officer,  at  twenty-three,  self-reliant 


344    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

because  consciously  well  disciplined,  vigilant,  careful, 
yet  as  personally  brave  as  the  impulsive  and  unre- 
strained ;  confided  with  missions  to  the  hostile  French 
settlements  on  the  Ohio,  and  saving,  by  his  knowledge 
of  savage  life  and  habits,  by  his  sagacity,  self-com- 
mand, and  tact,  the  remnants  of  Braddock's  army. 

As  a  statesman  well  rounded  in  intelligence,  well 
poised  in  judgment,  who  so  well  comprehended, 
weighed,  and  settled  the  new  questions  of  colonial 
rights  as  to  draw  from  Patrick  Henry  the  eulogy  "  that 
for  solid  information  and  sound  judgment  he  was  the 
greatest  man  on  the  floor  "  of  the  Continental  Congress, 
and  from  that  Congress  itself  its  emphatic  practical 
indorsement  by  his  election  as  commander-in-chief.  _ 

As  a  general,  managing  small  resources  and  means 
so  as  to  secure  the  best  results*  and  completest  ends ; 
sparing  of  the  lives  of  his  soldiers  as  of  the  members 
of  his  family,  yet  venturing  his  own  when  an  emer- 
gency made  his  great  figure  in  front  the  pledge  of  suc- 
cess ;  refusing  all  pay  and  emoluments ;  keeping  a 
minute  and  conscientious  account  of  his  expenses,  and 
hastening  at  the  close  of  the  war  to  place  his  regi- 
mentals at  the  opening  door  of  Peace.  -JU  a  President, 
marching  abreast  of  new  duties  and  obligations, 
thoroughly  comprehending,  and,  by  a  wise  forbearance 
and  clear-hearted  charity,  mastering  the  straggling, 
passionate  forces  of  new-born  and  grand  ambitions, 
State  rivalries,  and  material  competitions,  and  so  calm- 
ing, adjusting,  regulating,  yet  re-enforcing  them  by 
healthy  elements,  —  not  by  compromise  of  principle, 
but  by  high  conscientious  impartiality^  and  just,  equi- 
posed  authority,  —  as  to  receive  the  converging  ap- 


OLD   FAMILY  PORTRAITS.  345 

proval  and  accordant  praise  of  good  men  of  all  shades 
of  opinion. 

Dear,  good  old  grandfather !  no  wonder  that  the 
eighteenth  century  hastened  to  follow  thee ;  no  won- 
der that,  wedded  to  thee  so  long  and  lovingly,  it  cared 
not  to  survive  the  separation,  and  within  a  fortnight 
gathered  itself  into  the  same  tomb,  more  loved  for  thy 
presence  than  life  divided  from  thee. 

On  the  next  page  of  our  album  is  our  great-great- 
grand  and  good  mother  MRS.  MARTHA  WASHINGTON. 
We  love  so  much  to  look  at  her  sweet,  handsome  face, 
full  of  a  large,  generous,  grandmotherly  nature  as  a 
wide  and  deep  bowl  heaped  with  ripe  strawberries 
laughing  through  unstinted  masses  of  rich  yellow,  un- 
watered  cream.  We  feel  at  once  that  there  is  amply 
enough  to  go  round  the  largest  old-fashioned  family, 
and  no  fear,  if  visitors  come  in,  of  its  not  holding  out, 
or  of  a  scarcity  for  the  kitchen.  She  was  called  Lady 
Washington,  because  they  could  not  help  it ;  for  she 
was  a  lady. 

Of  course  our  grandmother  was  proud ;  not  vain, 
nor  boastful,  but  with  pride  of  character,  the  pride 
that  stiffens  virtue  into  well-doing,  makes  life  gracious, 
and  fences  in  goodness  from  stray  gossips,  and  self- 
constituted  censors  who  stray  from  their  own  dis- 
ordered homes  into  their  neighbor's  well-regulated 
households. 

Never  were  higher,  truer,  more  valuable  qualities, 
principles,  and  habits  corseted  in  a  female  bosom  than 
lived  in  hers. 

The  next  page  is  thumb-worn  and  greased  by  fre- 
quent handling;  for  Uncle  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  is  a 
15* 


346     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

deserved  favorite  with  the  family.  We  should  have 
liked  to  live  with  him,  or  if  the  house,  as  was  natural, 
was  too  full  for  that,  to  have  made  long  visits  at  his 
mansion.  His  is  a  right  royal,  good  face,  is  it  not  ? 
He  looks  as  if  he  was  always  in  love  with  a  whole 
school  of  well-behaved,  sweet-mannered  children,  and 
was  about  to  take  out  from  his  capacious  pockets,  with 
a  sly,  benevolent  surprise,  a  large  assorted  lot  of  pres- 
ents. His  face  beams  with  a  broad,  heavenly  tranced- 
ness,  as  if  it  had  taken  toll  from  his  sky-tapping  kite, 
and  had  become  charged  with  positive  celestial  elec- 
tricity. He  looks  as  if  he  might  have  been  chosen 
the  executor  of  all  the  estates  in  the  Union ;  and  as  if 
half  the  pangs  of  death  were  abstracted  from  those 
who  were  to  leave  their  children  and  property  to  his 
honest,  wise,  and  efficient  care.  He  seems  like  a  born 
trustee  for  schools,  an  hereditary  director  of  charities, 
—  one  nominated  in  every  village  and  town  to  every 
responsible  place,  and  elected  unanimously. 

In  his  broadly  balanced  characteristics  there  is,  too, 
a  latent,  reserved  force,  which  makes  us  fancy  that  he 
might,  when  commissioner  to  England,  in  1774,  have 
paid  a  visit  to  Burns  in  Scotland  and  suggested  to  him, 
as  advice  to  others,  those  shrewd  lines :  — 

"  Ay  free,  aff  ban'  your  story  tell, 

When  wi'  a  bosom  crony  ; 
But  still  keep  something  to  yoursel 
Ye  scarcely  tell  to  ony." 

In  fact,  it  is  upon  this  felt  reserve  of  uncommimi- 
cated  goodness  that  we  anchor  our  loving  trust,  feel- 
ing that  the  flukes  cannot  be  uplifted  nor  our  con- 
fidence drag.  Among  the  few  historical  characters 


OLD   FAMILY   PORTRAITS.  347 

that  red-mark  the  past  5873  years  of  the  accepted 
chronology  of  our  race,  Franklin  stands  among  the 
first  half-dozen  who  reconcile  us  to  public  greatness, 
whose  individuality  is  not  obscured,  whose  virtues  are 
not  hazed,  whose  purity  is  not  necked  anywhere  by 
any  soil  from  the  public  highways. 

A  very  fine  lady  was  our  aunt,  MRS.  JAMES  MADISON. 
That  is  very  manifest  by  even  a  casual  glance  at  her 
carefully  arranged  head-gear,  her  elaborately  disposed 
hair,  her  effectively  adjusted  shawl,  her  well-studied 
laces  and  thoughtfully  selected  jewelry,  collars,  cuffs, 
and  gloves.  A  little  too  fine,  perhaps,  to  be  cordially 
loved.  A  young  modest  person  would,  in  spite  of  her 
assuring  ease  of  manner,  feel  respectfully  uneasy  in 
her  presence  ;  but  so  respectable,  so  highly  respectable 
she  was,  and  still  shows  in  her  portrait,  that  we  are  all 
very  proud  of  her.  If  she  was  exacting,  she  gave  in 
return  and  to  all  equal  measures  of  refined  courtesy 
and  attention.  She  was  very  elegant  in  her  manners, 
but  she  was  patronizing.  Very  impressive  with  her 
grand  airs,  but  still  patronizing.  She  lit  up  the  White 
House  with  the  radiance  of  cultivated  beauty,  the  re- 
finements of  courtly  ease  and  high-bred  manner,  but 
still  was  she  patronizing. 

She  had  gone  through  a  third  of  a  century  of  years 
when  the  eighteenth  century  died.  She  afterwards  so 
cajoled  and  pleasantly  imposed  upon  Time,  that  he  for- 
got to  score  several  notches  against  her,  and  she  reached 
her  eighty-second  year,  about  six  months  before  the 
next  half-century  was  complete,  before  it  occurred  to 
him  that  the  handsome  old  lady,  with  the  smooth  rosy 
face,  had  actually  gained  twelve  lustres  on  the  allotted 


348     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

human  term.  While  her  husband  was  not  President 
until  1809,  and  continued  so  only  eight  years,  our  Aunt 
Madison  acted  like  a  President's  wife  before  she  went 
into  the  Federal  mansion,  and  carried  her  high  head- 
dress and  head  under  it,  like  a  Presidentess,  thirty-two 
years  after  lie  left  the  Executive  residence. 

On  the  next  page  of  our  album  is  an  awkward,  tall, 
ungainly,  raw-boned  figure,  slightly  stooping  in  the 
shoulders.  How  it  was  got  together  it  is  difficult  to 
conjecture,  how  kept  together  still  more  puzzling. 
With  a  sallow  complexion,  iron-bound  brow,  stern  lines 
running  down  and  apparently  holding  immovably  a 
large,  rigid  mouth,  with  a  face  like  a  large,  well-filled, 
cheerful  barn,  with  the  door  open,  our  good-hearted, 
noble-souled  cousin,  PATRICK  HENRY,  looks  out  at  us 
as  if  he  had  been  stared  at  before.  Fortunately,  our 
Aunt  Madison  is  on  the  other  side  of  the  leaf,  and  can- 
not be  disturbed  by  his  slovenly  dress.  The  features 
show  an  uneducated  man,  yet  one  of  strong  individ- 
uality, a  capacity  for  great  endurance,  a  fearlessness  of 
personal  consequences,  and  a  will  which  would,  even 
if  the  traces  were  cut,  draw  the  load  by  the  bit.  Of 
course  he  loved  a  fishing-rod  and  gun,  and  told  stories 
all  day  long.  Much  pith  there  was  in  his  daily  gath- 
ered anecdotes,  which  he  extracted  from  all  passing 
things,  and  put  into  the  indolent,  good-for-nothing 
crowd  that  hung  around  the  tavern,  or  which  crystal- 
lized around  the  stove  in  his  too  readily  neglected  law 
office.  Up  to  his  twenty-fourth  year  he  had  been  a 
farmer  and  country  store-keeper ;  but  as  his  only  inter- 
est in  the  farm  was  the  fish  which  ran  through  its 
liquid  ways,  and  as  his  account  of  stock  stopped  at 


OLD   FAMILY   PORTRAITS.  349 

the  fish-hooks,  powder,  and  ball,  which  he  speedily 
borrowed  of  himself  without  charge,  he  naturally  failed 
to  acquire  anything  but  sport  out  of  either.  He  and 
Henry  Clay  were  born  near  each  other.  Neither  of 
them  makes  a  good  portrait ;  both  were  careless  of  their 
personal  appearance,  and  each  was  as  generous  as  an 
apple-tree  in  full  bearing,  or  a  shower  in  June,  which 
slakes  the  thirst  of  lazy  meadows  lying  on  their  backs 
with  their  mouths  wide  open. 

But  what  a  treat  it  must  have  been  to  hear  Patrick 
Henry  speak.  The  small  dishonesties  of  rhetoric  lie 
scorned.  To  its  greatest  opportunities,  however,  he 
strode  with  a  master's  step  and  might.  His  long,  sal- 
low features  then  glowed,  the  stern  lines  melted  into 
an  illuminating  intellectual  beauty,  his  crooked  figure, 
a  moment  before  like  a  telescope  placed  on  end  and 
sliding  by  sections  into  itself,  then  stretched  out  and 
up  into  manliest  exaltation,  and  erect,  grandiose  dig- 
nity. His  keen  words,  like  the  battle-axe  of  the  Doug- 
las, cleaved  the  subject  from  head  to  chine.  His  large 
natural  thoughts  rushed  up  the  summits  of  argument, 
as  the  free  winds  sweep  the  hills,  without  labor  or 
effort,  and  shook  all  brains,  wise  or  unwise,  dull  or 
quick,  cultured  or  untutored,  bending  their  tops  before 
his  resistless  march,  and  shaking  all  their  obstinate 
roots  by  his  relentless  grasp.  No  grander  storm  of 
logic,  invective,  irony,  wit,  humor,  sharp  demonstra- 
tion, soul-rousing  appeal,  or  tender  pathos  ever  passed 
over  an  audience  and  stirred  them  from  the  deep  depths 
of  their  nature  than  that  which  he  awoke.  No  class 
interests,  like  those  of  the  Virginia  parsons  for  their 
tobacco  tithes,  no  selfish  isolations,  like  the  petty 


350      THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

claims  of  neighborhood  squires,  no  encroachments  on 
popular  rights,  like  the  Stamp  Act  or  tea  duties, 
could  withstand  the  noble  sweep  of  his  eloquence. 
The  tribune  of  the  people,  he  was  regarded,  ere  he  had 
reached  his  thirty-fifth  year,  as  without  exception  the 
greatest  orator  in  America,  if  not  in  the  world. 

On  the  opposite  page  is  the  photograph  of  a  dear 
visitor  to  our  family,  GENERAL  LAFAYETTE.  We  never 
cared  to  inquire  whether  he  was  a  relation  or  not.  He 
was  just  as  good  to  us  as  an  own  brother.  He  first 
came  to  see  us  when  we  were  poor  and  needed  friends. 
He  had  great  difficulty  in  reaching  us,  as  his  own  gov- 
ernment gave  orders  to  stop  him.  His  young  bride, 
equally  noble  in  her  nature,  encouraged  his  coming. 
He  was  obliged  to  escape  from  France  into  Spain,  and 
in  a  Spanish  port  to  take  passage  in  a  Spanish  ship, 
the  only  cargo  of  any  value,  except  that  made  up  of 
Columbus  and  his  one  hundred  and  twenty  men  from 
Palos  in  1492,  that  ever  came  to  us  from  the  land  of 
the  Cid.  The  spirited  young  marquis  remained  with 
us  from  1777  to  1781,  fighting  among  our  bravest,  suf- 
fering privations  with  the  most  patriotic,  confided  in 
and  beloved  by  Washington  and  the  best  of  the  Eevo- 
lution.  He  made  us  two  visits  after  the  war,  once  in 
1784,  and  the  second  time  just  forty  years  later,  upon 
a  special  invitation  of  the  nation.  Proud  and  glad 
were  we  all  to  see  him.  The  most  wonderful  part  of 
the  story  is,  that,  after  enduring  vigorous  hand-shaking 
through  each  of  our  then  twenty-four  States,  and  kiss- 
ing all  the  children  from  two  years  old  and  upwards, 
he  survived  the  job  ten  years. 

We  must  now  turn  over  the  leaves  rapidly,  catching 


OLD   FAMILY  PORTRAITS.  .  351 

quick,  pleasant  glances  at  the  fine,  pale  scholarly  fea- 
tures of  the  pure-minded  JOHN  JAY,  and,  on  the  oppo- 
site side,  of  the  handsome  face  and  form  of  his  accom- 
plished wife  SALLIE  LIVINGSTON,  who  mated  him  when 
he  was  only  nineteen,  and  consoled  his  heart  and  in- 
vigorated his  head  for  twenty-eight  eventful  years, 
during  which  his  inflexible  patriotism,  solid  judgment, 
and  weighty  learning  placed  him  by  the  side  of  Wash- 
ington and  John  Adams  in  the  estimation  of  the 
American  household. 

Then  come  the  bluff  face  of  hearty  old  ISRAEL  PUT- 
NAM, whose  expression  bears  the  clearly  read  inscrip- 
tion carved  on  his  tombstone,  "He  dared  to  lead 
where  any  dared  to  follow  "  ;  the  massed,  trustworthy 
head  of  NATHANIEL  GREENE,  with  its  square,  Quaker 
characteristics ;  FRANCIS  MARION'S  calm,  lucid,  tele- 
scopic eyes,  and  his  farmer-like  breadth  of  front,  ani- 
mated by  the  dash  which  egged  him,  when  in  the 
saddle,  to  plucky  marches ;  and  a  long  procession  of 
valiant  men  and  noble  women,  —  family  portraits  in 
our  national  home  gallery,  —  which  gem  and  illumi- 
nate our  collection  and  summon  fresh  pride  to  our 
patriotism,  and  new  pleasures,  on  each  review,  to  our 
hearts. 

It  is  quite  needless  to  suggest  that  here,  too,  are 
the  well-preserved  effigies  of  those  WISE  MEN  whom 
we  saw  together  on  the  summit  of  July  4,  1776,  and 
whose  remembered  figures  flitted  often  through  the 
varied  scenes  of  the  Eevolution  and  alighted  in  the 
green  boughs  of  our  memories. 

Some  of  these  faces  are  singularly  handsome,  illumi- 
nated with  the  beauty  of  great  purposes.  Some,  how- 


352     THE    COMIC   HISTORY    OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

ever,  are  rugged  as  hillocks,  rich  in  mould  but  unsub- 
dued by  the  plough  of  culture  or  the  spade  of  refining 
taste.  Some  few  hide  mean  purposes  behind  great, 
rotund  cheekiness ;  others  tell  a  mixed  story  of  joy 
and  suffering ;  a  few  ache  with  ambitions  unsatisfied ; 
still  fewer  awe  us  by  a  Titanic  distress ;  but  most  are 
firm  with  earnest,  resolute  convictions  spiked  with 
will  and  riveted  to  the  wide  aims  of  continental  pur- 
poses. 

Here  and  there  come  in  faces  of  great  softness, 
sweetness,  and  delicacy,  in  which  feminine  grace  and 
dignity  are  blent  so  holily;  the  mothers,  wives,  or 
sisters  of  the  men  of  the  Revolution  and  who  kept 
alive  in  their  own  loving  hearts  faith  in  God,  their 
kinsmen,  and  themselves ;  faces  which  plainly  say, 

"  This  is  a  haunted  world.    It  hath  no  breeze 
But  is  the  echo  of  some  voice  beloved  ; 
Its  pines  have  human  tones  ;  its  billows  wear 
The  color  and  the  sparkle  of  dear  eyes. 
Its  flowers  are  sweet  with  touch  of  tender  hands 
That  once  clasped  ours.     All  things  are  beautiful 
Because  of  something  lovelier  than  themselves, 
Which  breathes  within  them  and  will  never  die  ;  — 
Haunted,  but  not  with  any  spectral  gloom, 
Earth  is  suffused,  inhabited  bv  Heaven." 


OLD   FAMILY  PORTRAITS. 


353 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   STRUGGLE  AND  FALL  OF  FEDERALISM;    OR,  JOHN 
ADAMS'S  ADMINISTRATION. 

1797-1801. 

The  Pre-Adamite  Epoch:  its  Upheavals  and  Disruptions  in  America, 
and  the  red-hot  diplomatic  Stones,  Fauchet  and  Adet,  ejected  from 
France  upon  us.  —  The  new  French  Acrostics ;  and  the  Attempts  by 
our  Commissioners  and  Congress  to  solve  them.  —  Gold-mounted  Spec- 
tacles offered  us  by  France;  and  our  Inability  to  see  our  Interests  or 
Duty  through  them.  —  Why  and  when  the  Keel  of  the  American 
Navy  was  laid.  —  Of  the  Alien  and  Sedition  Laws;  why  passed  and 
how  passed  by.  —  General  Washington  and  the  Gallic  Cock ;  a  Crow 
never  crowed  out.  —  Napoleon's  Tour  in  Egypt  and  Palestine  de- 
scribed ;  and  its  Results  on  the  Treaty  of  Peace  deduced.  —  Of  the 
Office  and  Offices  of  Consul.  —  A  Review  and  new  View  of  our  Dif- 
ficulties with  France  from  1790  to  1800.  —  What  a  Pitt  England  fell 
into.  —  The  City  of  Washington  as  a  Geographical  Study.  —  About 
Mississippi,  Alabama,  and  the  French  Growth  of  Mobile.  —  The  Ter- 
ritorial Condition  illustrated.  —  The  Introduction  of  Vaccine  and  other 
Virus.  —  WThy  some  Things  first  break  out  in  Boston.  —  State  of  Parties 
in  1801.  —  Why  the  first  Adams  was  banished  from  the  Presidential 
Eden;  and  the  Flaming  Swords  which  prevented  his  Return. 

r  I  AHE  elder  pre- Adamite  epoch  in  our  history  was 
J.  past.  New,  more  fiery,  and  eruptive  elements, 
anti-Federal  or  Republican,  upheaving  and  disrupting 
the  old  strata  below,  broke  the  settled  upper  crust  of 
our  political  world. 

In  France,  the  Directory  of  Five,  succeeding  to  the 
Convention,  and  its  powerful  national  forces,  —  now 
welded  to  Napoleon  by  the  fusing  heats  of  Monte 


THE  STRUGGLE  AND  FALL  OF  FEDERALISM.   355 

Notte,  Arcoli,  and  Rivoli,  —  ejected  out  upon  us  those 
red-hot  diplomatic  stones,  Fauchet  and  Adet.  The 
French  conundrums  thickened.  Genet's  successors 
out-geneted  Genet.  They  not  only  equipped  cruisers 
from  American  ports,  but  —  displeased  with  a  treaty 
which  our  government  had  seen  fit  to  make  with 
England,  stipulating  for  the  neutrality  of  America  in 
the  pending  war  between  France  on  the  one  side,  and 
England,  Holland,  Spain,  and  Rome  on  the  other  — 
authorized  the  capture  and  confiscation  of  American 
ships.  In  fact,  the  French  envoys  seemed  determined 
to  show  the  absurdity  of  the  old-fashioned  rule,  that  it 
took  two  to  make  a  bargain. 

Mr.  Pinckney,  the  American  minister  to  France, 
was  obliged  to  leave  that  American  paradise,  Paris, 
without  a  fig-leaf  of  excuse  to  cover  the  naked  results 
of  his  mission. 

That  comic  body,  Congress,  was  convened  to  look 
into  the  French  conundrums.  Of  course  they  talked 
so  much  that  they  forgot  what  they  came  together  for ; 
and  no  one  was  any  wiser  when  the  speaker's  gavil 
fell  and  sent  them  home.  The  puzzled  President  de- 
spatched three  commissioners  to  get  a  new  statement 
of  the  riddle.  The  Directory  told  these  gentlemen 
—  as  legislative  bodies  now  reply  to  applicants  for 
relief —  that  they  could  only  see  them  through  gold- 
mounted  spectacles.  Such  a  spectacle  the  American 
people  were  not  prepared  to  become.  Knowing  the 
sympathy  of  the  anti-Federal  party  in  America  with 
their  principles,  the  French  Directory  slammed  the 
door  abruptly  in  the  face  of  the  two  commissioners 
with  Federal  leanings,  and  held  the  envoy  with  Re- 


356     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

publican    tendencies,  like    another    Joseph,    by  his 
skirts. 

In  spite  t>f  party  feeling,  however,  American  indig- 
nation now  rose  to  the  gorge.  A  small  standing  army 
was  raised.  The  keel  of  our  navy  was  laid,  and  a  Navy 
Department  created,  over  which  was  placed  Benjamin 
Stodart.  The  alien  law,  authorizing  the  President  to 
elbow  out  of  the  country  disagreeable  foreigners,  and 
the  sedition  act,  to  fine  and  imprison  any  one  writing 
too  freely  against  the  government,  —  measures  which 
marked  the  distance  of  Americans  of  that  day  from  the 
political  millennium,  —  were  first  passed  by  Congress, 
and  afterwards  passed,  without  any  fear,  by  everybody 
else.  The  wise  old  General  at  Mount  Vernon  was  ap- 
pointed Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army;  and  there 
was  a  fair  chance  that  the  American  Captain  might 
yet  be  obliged  to  cut  the  comb  of  that  strutting  French 
cock,  which  had  lately  scratched  and  crowed  on  so  many 
Italian  dung-hills  that  he  fancied  himself  a  full-fledged 
eagle. 

Peace  commissioners,  however,  settled  the  difficul- 
ties, as  old  ladies  do  tea,  by  a  long  chat  around  a 
covered  table.  Bonaparte,  who  had  made  a  flying  mil- 
itary trip  to  Egypt,  had  got  the  Pyramids  to  look 
down  on  him  from  their  stony,  century -crusted  tops, 
while  he  slaughtered  the  Mamelukes  at  their  feet,  had 
pushed  across  the  desert  with  the  mirage  of  empire 
ever  rising  upon  his  unslaked  sight,  had  made  a  dis- 
agreeable tour  of  the  Holy  Land,  and  had  attempted 
twenty-three  times  in  vain  to  take  St.  Jean  D'Acre, 
came  back  to  Paris  to  be  made  First  Consul  in  De- 
cember, 1799,  —  a  Roman  office,  which  he  filled  like  a 


THE  STRUGGLE  AND  FALL  OF  FEDERALISM.    357 

Roman,  by  subjugating  all  Europe  by  arms  and  inso- 
lence. The  gristle  of  the  Corsican  had  at  last  stiffened 
into  the  bone  of  a  ruler  of  a  large,  consolidated  em- 
pire ;  and  the  concentration  of  power  in  his  hands 
enabled  him  to  concede  to  the  justice  of  America  what 
the  shifting  authority  of  constituted  assemblies,  con- 
ventions, legislative  assemblies,  and  directories  were 
too  weak  to  dare.  Bonaparte  met  the  American  com- 
missioners around  the  round  table,  himself  as  round 
in  power  as  it  in  shape,  and  in  September,  1800,  gave 
his  autograph  to  a  treaty  of  peace  which  shielded 
American  independence  of  action  from  the  insults  of 
the  envoys  of  a  nation  hitherto  friendly,  —  a  nation 
which  had  in  a  timely  and  efficient  way,  mainly  to 
help  itself  against  an  old  rival,  helped  us,  but  which, 
for  the  preceding  ten  years,  had  claimed,  and  offen- 
sively insisted  in  return,  not  from  our  gratitude,  but 
as  a  right,  that  we  should  give  our  assistance  to  their 
ever-shifting  schemes,  with  many  of  which  we  had  no 
sympathy,  and  at  a  time  when  to  furnish  aid  was 
almost  to  ruin  our  young  strength. 

While  the  Frenchman  was  thus  bestriding  Europe, 
putting  England  to  her  straits,  and  in  fact  even  to 
such  despair  as  to  find  relief  in  the  Pitt,  our  American 
Colossus  fell  before  the  only  foe  which  was  ever  per- 
mitted to  be  his  conqueror. 

Washington  died  December  14,  1799. 

The  year  following  the  seat  of  government  was  re- 
moved to  the  District  of  Columbia,  where,  by  frequent 
patching  since,  it  has  been  made  to  stand  much  wear 
and  tear.  The  city  named  after  Washington  is  still 
the  greatest  atlas  in  the  United  States,  its  large  geog- 


358    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

raphy  requiring  the  most  patient  study  to  find  out 
what  one  is  looking  for.  Many  die  without  accom- 
plishing it,  some  by  it.  The  wheel-shaped  city  has 
rotated  off  from  its  periphery  so  many  different  officials, 
that,  although  like  a  velocipede  it  is  very  hard  riding, 
it  cannot  well  be  stopped  without  considerable  injury 
to  its  Federal  rider. 

The  wide  region  called  Mississippi,  embracing  the 
present  State  of  that  name  and  also  Alabama,  —  the 
latter  no  longer  apprehending  any  new  petticoat  insur- 
rection in  Mobile  from  the  descendants  of  the  insur- 
gents of  1706,  wThich  with  French  slowness  in  swelling 
the  census  had  only  in  ninety-five  years  become  two 
hundred  and  fifty,  and  these  balanced  by  an  equal 
number  of  blacks,  —  this  Mississippi  region,  now  sepa- 
rated from  Georgia,  was  put  into  that  pantaleted  ter- 
ritorial condition  in  which  a  community  finds  itself, 
like  a  young  girl-lady  at  sixteen,  who  goes  to  school, 
lives  at  home,  is  governed  partly  by  herself  and  partly 
by  her  parents,  acquires  pocket-money  from  the  old 
people,  and  notions  from  circumstances,  and  drifts  vig- 
orously on  through  an  unsettled  perplexity  into  an 
early  and  settled  independence.  Such  in  this  year  of 
grace  1869  are  Arizona,  Dakota,  Idaho,  Montana,  Col- 
orado, New  Mexico,  Utah,  and  Washington,  whose 
quickly  doubling  populations  are  rapidly  pursuing  their 
education  through  a  university  where  sharp,  practical 
studies  are  urged  with  bullet  speed ;  mining  silver, 
gold,  and  lead  by  day,  and  spending  most  of  it  in 
gambling  saloons  by  night ;  rolling  their  residences  on 
wheels  from  one  ranch  to  another;  practising  high 
gymnastics  with  the  Indians,  by  a  method  better  thau 


THE  STRUGGLE  AND  FALL  OF  FEDERALISM.   359 

Dio  Lewis's  ;  taking  frequent  lessons  in  bar-rooms,  and 
pretty  sure  to  make  and  be  a  mark  for  some  one  in 
every  quarter. 

It  may  not  be  beneath  the  dignity  of  history  to  state 
that,  while  the  new  century  was  inoculated  with  virus 
taken  from  various  sources,  pure  and  impure,  political, 
monetary,  and  social,  its  first  year  witnessed  the  earliest 
introduction  of  vaccination  for  small-pox  in  this  coun- 
try, to  which  it  worked  its  way  four  years  after  its  first 
discovery  by  Edward  Jenner  in  England. 

Of  course  it  first  took  near  Boston,  where  it  has 
since  continued  to  break  out  in  various  eruptions,  whose 
vesicles,  always  surrounded  by  a  rose-hued  areola  in 
the  eyes  of  home  nurses,  it  never  allowed  any  one  but 
itself  to  puncture. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  political  crust,  broken  and 
cracked  in  1797,  again  heaved  anew;  muttered  thun- 
der rolled  off  from  the  press  ;  party  lava  reddened  the 
sides  of  the  political  Vesuvius,  over  whose  cindered  lips 
soon  poured  the  hot  melted  streams  of  rage,  which 
left,  as  they  cooled,  nothing  of  the  late  Federal  party 
but  scoria  and  ashes. 

The  first  Adams  was  banished  from  his  much-loved 
Presidential  Eden,  and  a  flaming  sword  with  many 
blades  —  alien  law,  sedition  act,  personal  desire  for 
office,  supposed  sympathy  with  England,  and  suspected 
antipathy  to  France  —  was  set  at  the  door,  turning 
every  way,  and  prohibiting  his  return  any  way. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  CHIEF  AMERICAN   PRODUCTIONS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

The  Cereals  and  Serials  of  the  last  Century.  —  Hares  caught  before  cooked. 
—  Useless  Indians  put  under  Ground.  —  Human  Bones  the  Phosphates 
of  History.  —  The  Statecraft  of  Washington,  Jefferson,  and  Others. — 
The  Automatic  Workings  of  Governments  exposed.  —  What  small 
Brains  rule.  —  Description  of  our  Government  Machine.  —  Its  Merits 
and  Demerits.  —  The  Disadvantages  of  frequent  Changes  of  official 
Workmen.  —  How  the  Machine-Oil  is  stolen.  —  The  Inventions  of  the 
Eighteenth  Cycle  of  Time.  —  An  American  Noah  inebriated  by  the 
Cotton-Gin.  —  How  Ham  laughed  and  how  Japhet  put  a  Blanket  over 
the  Patriarch.  —  The  Growth  of  Commerce.  —  The  Notions  which  Im- 
portations put  in  and  on  the  Heads  of  the  Young  People.  —  Paris 
supplies  the  Mistakes  of  Nature.  —  Of  Dress.  —  Hoops,  Head-Gear, 
Coats,  Vests,  Tights,  etc.,  descanted  upon.  —  Improvements  in  Roads 
and  Means  of  Transit.  —  The  Journey  from  New  York  to  Boston  in 
1732.  —  The  Road-Maker  and  Vehicle-Propeller  as  Leaders  of  Civil- 
ization. —  The  great  Invention  now  needed.  —  The  Populations  of  New 
York  and  Boston  in  1700.  —  Description  of  the  Former  in  that  Year  by 
an  English  Traveller.  —  Slave-Market  in  New  York  in  1711.  —  Manu- 
factures and  their  Growth.  —  The  Habits  of  the  Period  described.  — 
Improvements  in  Morals,  and  wherein.  —  A  general  Review  of  Ameri- 
can Literature  and  Book-Making  through  the  Century. —  The  first 
American  printed  Volume;  and  how  fast  and  long  it  ran.  —  Earliest 
Original  Book  of  Poems  ;  by  a  Woman,  with  a  touching  Specimen 
therefrom.  —  An  Account  of  the  leading  Writers  on  Theology,  Political 
Science,  Government,  Natural  Science,  Natural  History,  of  Novels, 
etc.  —  The  American  Joss ;  its  Worshippers,  and  their  Treatment. 

BEFORE  turning  our  backs  upon  the  eighteenth 
and  leaping  upon  the  engine-driven  nineteenth 
century,  to  be  borne  swiftly  through  its  rapidly  chang- 


AMERICAN  PRODUCTIONS  OF  THE  18TH  CENTURY.   361 

ing  scenes,  it  is  well  to  take  a  hurried  glance  back- 
ward over  the  path  we  have  traversed  and  to  pick  up 
a  few  waifs  strewn  along  the  wayside. 

The  largest  American  products  of  the  last  century 
were  material.  Cereals  were  common  and  abundant ; 
serials  uncommonly  few.  The  Western  lobe  or  half  of 
the  world's  brain  did  not  work  so  actively  as  the 
Eastern.  Our  forefathers  were  occupied  with  the  ear- 
nest business  of  first  catching  their  hare  before  pre- 
paring to  cook  him.  They  improved  the  breeds  of 
useless  Indians  by  putting  them  thoroughly  under 
ground.  They  disposed  also  of  not  a  few  Englishmen 
and  Hessians  during  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  by 
converting  them  at  Saratoga,  Princeton,  Eutaw  Springs, 
Yorktown,  and  elsewhere  into  good  compost,  making 
our  soil  historically  fruitful. 

Human  bones  are  the  phosphates  of  history.  They 
quicken  a  rich  heroic  growth  over  sterile  soils.  Our 
ancestors  enriched  many  American  fields  in  this  way. 
It  is  not  Quaker  husbandry,  and  Quaker  phosphates 
are  few ;  but  for  all  that,  the  seeds  which  they  raise 
and  sell  never  do  as  well  as  when  sown  in  these  phos- 
phated  furrows. 

A  large  crop  of  political  principles  was  gathered  in 
by  such  laborers  as  "Washington,  Hamilton,  Jefferson, 
Jay,  Patrick  Henry,  and  others,  unpractised  in  other 
fields,  but  yet  found  to  be  efficient  and  skilful.  They 
learned  the  old  art  and  mystery  of  government  so 
readily,  and  showed  its  workings  with  such  unreserve, 
that  statecraft,  —  which  theretofore  had  been,  in  spite 
of  its  pretentious  parade,  mainly  a  system  of  mutual 
imposition  and  overreaching,  —  saw  itself  suddenly 
16 


362    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

exposed  to  popular  inspection,  and  made  a  subject  of 
vulgar,  every-day  comment.  Like  the  automatic 
chess-player,  which  seemed  such  a  mystery  in  its 
curious,  systematic,  intelligent  work,  these  old  auto- 
matic, governmental  machines  were  found  to  be  con- 
trivances, very  common  when  taken  apart;  in  fact, 
like  the  wonderful  chess-player,  kept  slyly  in  motion, 
by  a  very  ordinary  chap,  boxed  up  inside  and  moving 
from  his  hidden  quarters,  springs  invented  by  a 
person  whose  name  was  concealed,  and  which  kept 
the  pieces  going  just  as  well  as  if  the  operator  had  a 
brain  to  work  with.  The  machine  which  our  fore- 
fathers finished  in  1789,  —  scorning  to  take  out  a 
patent  for  it,  or  in  any  way  to  make  it  exclusively 
their  own,  —  apparently  complex  but  really  simple,  and 
open  to  inspection  in  all  its  parts,  consisted  of  a  stiff 
popular  main-spring,  distributing  its  propelling  forces 
through  primary  wheels  and  political  chain-work, 
which  runs  from  the  main  wheel  to  smaller  state 
wheels,  and  so  back  and  through  governors  and  assem- 
blies of  ingenious  cogged  and  racket  motions,  securing 
thus  a  free  yet  regulated  movement  to  all  the  parts. 
It  is  a  good  machine,  although  operated  at  a  great  dis- 
advantage by  reason  of  the  frequent  changes  in  the 
hands  employed,  who  have  scarcely  time  to  learn 
their  business  before  they  are  required  to  give  another 
set  a  chance.  It  is  inexpensive,  notwithstanding  that 
some  of  the  workmen  are  learning  the  kingly  trick  of 
considering  as  their  own  a  good  share  of  the  oil  which, 
in  fact,  belongs  exclusively  to  its  owners,  and  is  in- 
tended only  to  keep  the  machine  running.  Of  course 
foreigners  found  not  a  little  fault  with  this  American 


AMERICAN  PRODUCTIONS  OF  THE  18TH  CENTURY.   3G3 

product,  alleging  defects  which  seem  very  great  when 
viewed  under  European  lights.  At  first  they  expressed 
as  many  objections  to  it  as  the  cotton-planters  to 
Whitney's  gin ;  but  it  is  now  very  manifest  that, 
while  taking  exceptions  to  the  political  machine,  these 
foreign  gentlemen  have  copied  the  planters'  example 
of  getting  up,  as  soon  as  they  conveniently  could,  very 
palpable  imitations  of  the  deprecated  plan. 

Among  the  mechanical  inventions,  the  gin  for  clean- 
ing cotton-seeds  out  of  the  white  tangle,  combing  the 
shock  head  of  the  old  king,  and  thus  making  him  at 
once  a  power  and  a  presentable  personage  among  other 
self-constituted  sovereigns, —  an  invention  wrought  out 
in  1793  by  a  cute  Yankee,  —  was  one  which,  in  its 
results  directly  on  the  material,  and  indirectly  on  the 
moral,  condition  of  the  United  States  stands  emi- 
nently foremost.  By  the  old  hand-picking  process, 
the  slave  had  his  hands  full  to  separate  the  seeds  from 
a  single  pound  of  cotton  a  day.  The  new  mechanical 
picker  cleaned  six  thousand  six  hundred  pounds  within 
the  same  time.  The  gin  so  intoxicated  the  planter, 
that  he  committed  all  sorts  of  political  extravagances 
and  uttered  many  maudlin  ejaculations,  until  finally, 
in  1861,  he  threw  himself  down  upon  a  bed  of 
3,400,000  bales  in  the  condition  of  Noah  when,  after 
the  flood,  he  became  very  hilarious  in  the  presence  of 
his  children.  Ham  laughed  exceedingly  at  the  specta- 
cle of  the  American  Noah  ;  but  Japhet,  after  allowing 
the  drunkenness  four  years  to  cool,  at  last  put  over  the 
offensive  nakedness  a  large  patch-work  blanket,  recon- 
structed at  a  quilting-match  in  Washington.  It  is 
expected  that  hereafter  his  majesty  will  wear  colors 


364    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

of  a  faster  moral  hue  than  before  he  so  abused  the 
gin. 

Commerce,  no  longer  tied  up  to  the  shore  by  the 
English  navigation  acts,  began,  in  the  last  quarter  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  to  creep  out  from  the  com- 
modious bays  and  harbors  of  our  long,  wavy  coast ;  and 
soon,  not  content  with  these  timorous  tentatives,  put  on 
waistbands,  top-gallant  manners,  and  flaunting  gear,  and 
went  boldly  courting  among  the  wine-cheeked  nations, 
the  silk-growing  empires,  and  spicy-tougued  kingdoms 
of  the  earth.  Importations,  of  course,  not  only  put 
many  new  things  on,  but  in,  the  heads  of  the  emanci- 
pated Americans,  who  showed  their  independence, 
then  as  now,  by  buying  abroad  liberally  the  things 
which  they  did  not  make  or  need  here.  In  spite  of 
sumptuary  laws,  which  in  some  of  the  new  States  im- 
posed fines  for  owning  more  than  one  silk  gown  in  a 
family,  and  which  banished  jewelry  from  homes  still 
innocent  of  aught  but  trinkets  that  cost  less  money 
than  taste,  the  beaux  and  belles  of  the  period  whereof 
we  speak  began  to  put  on  hairs  where  nature  had  for- 
gotten to  furnish  them,  and  supplied  from  Paris,  in 
amounts  limited  it  is  true,  appliances  to  remedy  defects 
which  fashion  insisted  had  been  left  by  the  Creator,  in 
making  up  woman  from  a  sleepy  man.  Hoops  every 
few  years  girdled  the  larger  or  smaller  conceits  of 
Madam  Mode's  improved  figures.  Of  course  Paris 
was  always  finding  mistakes  in  the  original  Eden 
pattern  ;  and  her  customers  were  ever  ready  to  try  her 
suggestions  as  to  the  newest  mode  of  correcting  them. 
Top-gears  naturally  varied  like  the  crescendo  et  diminu- 
endo notes  in  music,  or  the  equally  flexible  bars  of  the 


AMERICAN  PRODUCTIONS  OF  THE  18TH  CENTURY.   365 

gold  market,  whose  undulating  lines  draw  such  differ- 
ent tunes  from  its  performers,  and  sometimes  run  so 
high  as  to  take  away  all  their  breath.  Tights,  now 
unwhisperable  except  in  veracious  histories,  held  their 
own  with  elderly  gentlemen  to  the  very  close  of  the 
century,  and  were  clasped  with  silver  enough  to  bring 
a  smile,  in  our  day,  all  over  the  wrinkling  face  of  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  The  wide-tailed  coats  and 
broad-lapelled  vests  of  the  respectable  citizens  of  the 
Washington  and  Adams  periods  would,  if  worn  now 
upon  the  platform  of  an  equal  rights  convention,  make 
the  fame  of  their  wearers,  and  insure  full-length  por- 
traitures of  their  inner  selves  by  conversation-drawing 
correspondents. 

Another  production  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
better  material  ways  for  translation  over  the  surface 
of  our  rapidly  augmenting  areas.  In  1732  enterprising 
stages  took  fourteen  days  from  New  York  to  Boston ; 
but  ere  the  cycle  had  rounded  up  to  1800,  the  time, 
by  reason  of  better  roads,  was  reduced  one  half.  The 
hard  earnings,  trickling  from  the  little  heaps  that  labor 
had  gathered  up,  began  to  flow  out  into  turnpikes  ;  and 
milestones  chronicled  spaces  and  pointed  the  fingers 
of  Time  to  measures  for  ascertaining  and  so  accelerat- 
ing speed.  The  road-maker  and  the  vehicle-propeller 
are  the  two  Dioscuri  of  modern  civilization.  Whoever 
subtracts  portions  of  the  earth's  surface,  be  it  solid  or 
aqueous,  from  between  separated  States,  communities, 
or  individuals,  multiplies  the  well-being  and  happiness 
of  the  human  race.  Could  the  tea  raiser  in  China  be 
placed  alongside  of  the  tea  consumer  in  America,  or 
the  cotton  manufacturer  of  Lowell  within  a  half-hour's 


366     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


AMERICAN  PRODUCTIONS  OF  THE  18TH  CENTURY.   367 

delivery  of  his  fabrics  from  their  purchaser,  the  ex- 
penses of  handling  at  either  end,  the  long,  costly,  te- 
dious voyages  that  now  waste  so  much  labor,  time,  and 
money,  and  the  acumulated  taxes  upon  the  articles 
sold  added  by  intermediate  commissions,  would  be 
saved.  The  costs  of  translation  are  a  necessary  but 
onerous  assessment  upon  productive  industry.  The 
greatest  invention  now  needed  is  one  which  would  so 
condense  the  earth's  bulk  by  improved  and  rapid 
communication,  as  to  squeeze  out  the  distances  that 
separate  nations  and  chill  their  natural  outflow  from 
themselves  into  others. 

In  1700  the  population  of  Boston  was  7,000  ;  that 
of  New  York  5,250,  of  which  latter  one  in  seven  was 
colored;  a  proportion  which  was  augmented  in  1711  in 
favor  of  the  blacks,  by  the  establishment  of  a  regular 
and  public  slave-market.  An  English  traveller  de- 
scribes Boston  in  1700  as  a  place  whose  "  buildings 
are,  like  its  women,  neat  and  pretty ;  the  streets  of 
pebble,  like  the  hearts  of  the  men."  From  such  flinty 
masculines  no  wonder  that  the  population  only  reached 
to  24,937  in  the  next  one  hundred  years. 

Among  the  leading  productions  of  this  century  the 
establishment  and  growth  of  manufactures  must  be 
reckoned.  Even  before  the  Eevolution,  iron-mills  at 
Salisbury,  Connecticut,  at  Cold  Spring,  on  the  Hudson, 
at  Valley  Forge  and  Durham,  Pennsylvania,  had  lifted 
their  ponderous  hammers  to  weld  the  fused  ores, 
dragged  out  of  our  slightly  tumbled  beds  by  cars,  and 
had  commenced  to  fabricate  instruments  of  husbandry, 
kitchen  utensils,  and  other  tripods  on  which  sat,  then 
as  now,  the  Pythonesses  of  life,  who  not  only  inter- 


368    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

pret,  but  are  themselves  the  oracles  of  fate.  Our 
running  streams  soon  coaxed  cotton  to  take  a  turn 
around  the  spindles  which  Arkwright,  in  1768,  had  so 
taught  to  whirl  with  their  mechanical  iron  fingers,  that 
one  man  could  work  a  stubborn  iron  mule  up  to  a 
capacity  equal  to  one  hundred  and  thirty  of  the  human 
species.  The  cotton-gin,  ere  the  century  closed  ac- 
counts with  its  busy  customers,  had  handed  over  such 
clean  cotton  to  the  coquettish  jennies,  that  very  pretty 
yarns  began  to  be  spun  along  many  gliding  streams. 

The  habits  prevailing  through  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury were  still  transitional.  It  was  the  chrysalis  film, 
covering  the  flitting  worm  which  had  succeeded  the 
inert  and  slow-moving  grub  of  the  seventeenth,  and 
which  was  soon  to  burst  into  the  gayer,  full-winged 
butterfly  of  the  nineteenth  cycle  of  time.  AVhat  hab- 
its they  had  were  of  solid  silver.  The  platings,  spread 
over  and  hiding  darker  substances  with  polished  sur- 
faces, were  not  yet  invented. 

Morals,  too,  triturated  by  the  ever-restless  surges  of 
time,  like  the  pebbles  on  a  shore  which  the  industrious 
ocean  ever  scrubs  and  washes,  became  rounder  and 
smoother,  and  lost  something  of  those  angular  asperities 
which  added  nothing  to  their  usefulness  or  strength. 

If  we  take  an  account  of  the  purely  intellectual  and 
literary  stock  on  hand  in  America  at  the  close  of  the 
century,  we  shall  find  that,  while  the  one  hundred 
years  had  been  run  on  a  slender  and  mainly  upon  bor- 
rowed capital,  there  were  results  in  fabricated  stuns 
by  no  means  discreditable,  and  in  raw  material  a  mass 
very  pleasant  to  contemplate.  To  a  large  extent  our 
literary  manufactures  were  still  imitations  of  English 


AMERICAN  PRODUCTIONS  OF  THE  18TH  CENTURY.    369 

styles,  with  an  increasing  tendency  to  introduce  Amer- 
ican figures  in  the  patterns.  The  first  literary  effort 
was  in  hymn  and  psalm  books.  The  very  first  volume 
printed  in  this  country  was  "  The  Bay  Psalm-Book," 
published,  of  course,  near  Boston  (at  Cambridge)  in 
1640 ;  rather  slow  in  metres,  but  which,  before  1750, 
had  run  through  seventy  editions,  —  run  in  fact  so  well 
and  fast  that,  like  certain  plays  now,  it  forgot  how  or 
where  to  stop.  Singing-books,  as  an  intellectual  circu- 
lation, thus  went  to  the  American  head,  and,  without 
blowing  the  matter  too  'much,  we  may  reasonably 
assume  that  this  tendency  set  up  the  American  nose 
as  an  instrument  of  psalmody. 

The  first  book  of  original  poems  was  by  a  woman, 
Mrs.  Anne  Bradstreet.  The  third  edition  came  out  in 
Boston  in  1758.  Besides  this  intellectual  progeny,  she 
had  eight  children ;  and  to  these  latter  she  thus  alludes 
in  the  printed  issue  :  — 

"  I  had  eight  birds  hatch't  in  the  nest; 
Four  cocks  there  were  and  hens  the  rest; 
I  nurst  them  np  with  pains  and  care, 
Nor  cost  nor  labor  did  I  spare, 
Till  at  last  they  felt  their  wing, 
Mounted  the  trees  and  learned  to  sing." 

During  the  first  half  of  the  century,  ecclesiastical 
and  religious  writings  in  all  departments  naturally 
took  the  lead,  as  in  these  American  mind  was  left  free. 
In  this  field  roamed  the  two  Mathers,  father  and  son,  — 
Increase,  the  first,  but  unfortunately  not  the  last,  who 
was  created  a  D.  D. ;  and  Cotton,  who  committed 
nearly  three  hundred  and  eighty-three  sins  in  as  many 
books,  with  which  he  loaded  down  the  world,  the  great- 

'  O 

est  like  its  title,  Magnalia.     He  made  a  partial  atone- 
16*  x 


370     THE   COMIC   HISTOKY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

meDt  in  a  few  good  treatises.  In  the  same  department 
wrought  largely,  and  with  a  "Freedom  of  the  AY  ill," 
Jonathan  Edwards,  of  whom  Dugald  Stewart  said, 
"  that  in  logical  acuteness  and  subtilty  he  did  not 
yield  to  any  disputant  bred  in  the  universities  of  Eu- 
rope "  ;  Samuel  Johnson,  the  first  president  of  Colum- 
bia College,  and  the  father  of  that  highly  respectable 
family,  the  American  Protestant  Episcopal  Church ; 
Ezra  Stiles,  who  delivered  orations  in  good  Latin,  and 
found  audiences  to  listen  to  them ;  Timothy  Dwight, 
his  successor  as  president  of  Yale  College,  whose 
"  System  of  Theology "  still  claims  attention,  even 
among  the  acute  researches  of  the  bibliologists  of  our 
time,  and  whose  four  volumes  of  "Travels  in  New 
England  and  New  York  "  give  rare  reading  on  express 
trains;  Samuel  Hopkins,  Joseph  Bellamy,  William 
"White,  the  first  American  bishop  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  and  whose  sweet  spirit  perfumed  even  his 
controversial  writings ;  Edward  Payson,  Joseph  S. 
Buckminster,  and  many  others  ;  —  of  but  few  of  whom 
it  could  be  said,  "  that  their  works  do  follow  them  "  — 
to  silence ;  for  the  churches  still  hold  them  in  living 
honor. 

Political  writings  divided  with  the  theological  the 
public  mind  as  soon  as  government  became  domesti- 
cated. In  books  like  "  The  Federalist,"  "  Notes  on 
Virginia,"  "  Discourses  on  Davila  "  ;  in  speeches  em- 
bedding constitutional  argument ;  in  treatises,  tracts, 
and  in  all  forms  and  ways  known  to  type,  many  of 
the  wise  men  of  the  Revolution,  with  James  Otis, 
Josiah  Quincy,  Jeremy  Belknap,  David  Piamsey,  and 
others,  spake  out  in  varied  logic,  historical  research, 


AMERICAN  PRODUCTIONS  OF  THE  18TH  CEN1URY.   371 

wit,  satire,  and  in  captivating  dialogue,  discussing 
principles  of  government,  political  ethics,  and  social 
economy. 

In  the  natural  sciences,  Benjamin  Franklin,  David 
Kittenhouse,  Benjamin  Rush,  Samuel  L.  Mitchell,  and 
Count  Rumford ;  in  natural  history,  Cadwallader  Col- 
den,  Paul  Dudley,  John  Bartram,  and  Alexander  Wil- 
son ;  in  history,  William  Stith,  Abiel  Holmes ;  among 
the  singing  birds,  in  the  same  tree  with  Anne  Brad- 
street  but  on  higher  branches,  Philip  Freneau,  John 
Trumbull,  the  author  of  "  McFingal,"  Joel  Barlow, 
who  got  up  "  Hasty  Pudding,"  and  survived  "  The 
Columbiad,"  and  Joseph  Hopkinson,  who  salutes  us 
evermore  in  "  Hail  Columbia  "  ;  and  finally,  in  fiction, 
standing  by  himself,  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  whose 
nine  novels  in  paper  covers  delighted  our  great-grand- 
mothers ;  —  all  these  were  quite  equal  to  the  instruc- 
tion of  their  various  audiences,  and  might,  had  they 
lived  long  enough,  written  something  —  perhaps  sev- 
eral novels  each— for  the  "New  York  Ledger." 

The  last  production,  whereof  we  shall  speak,  was 
that  great  American  Joss,  money,  which  was  set  up 
as  an  idol  in  many  households,  but  which  had  not  yet 
been  installed  in  municipal  halls,  fashionable  churches, 
and  State  capitals.  Beautiful  to  the  sight  at  first  were 
its  golden  hands  and  feet,  and  almost  kissable  the 
wand  which  it  drew  before  the  glistering  eyes  of  its 
frantic  worshippers.  Of  course  no  one  was  believed 
then,  any  more  than  now,  who  called  attention  to  the 
cruel  steel  knives  which  it  hid  in  its  dollar-embossed 
breast,  and  against  whose  sharp  points  he  pressed 
those  who  yielded  to  his  fatal  embrace. 


372     THE   COMIC   HISTOBiT   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

DEMOCRACY  IN  POWER;  OR,  JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION. 

1801-1809. 

Few  Removals  by  Mr.  Jefferson  from  the  Ungilt,  Official  Chairs.  —  Mr. 
Smith  gets  into  the  Navy.  —  Who  started  long  Messages  to  Congress  ; 
and  the  Difficulty  of  finding  an  End  to  them.  —  War  with  Tripoli  ;  and 
the  Complexion  with  which  the  Bey  ended  it.  —  Decatur  and  his  Med- 
iterranean Travels.  —  Ohio  in  1802.  —  The  early  Danger  it  ran  of  being 
all  cut  up  into  City  Lots  —  How  the  Exodus  of  its  Population  was  the 
Genesis  of  its  Growth.  —  Of  Westering  Caravans.  —  Bonaparte  sells 
Louisiana,  and  what  a  Sell  it  was.  —  How  we  were  saved  an  extra 
Volume  of  Supreme  Court  Decisions.  —  The  Murder  of  Alexander 
Hamilton.  —  A  Ghost-Story  about  Aaron  Burr.  —  The  public  Estimate 
of  his  Character  unchanged  by  Biographical  varnishing.  —  A  South 
Carolina  Conceit.  —  The  Play  of  Lear  in  Tripoli.  —  Peculiar  Mussul- 
man Habits;  the  Author  of  Don  Quixote.  —  Michigan  escapes  the 
Cuppings  of  Eastern  States.  —  Her  lymphatic  Temperament.  —  Lake 
Michigan  as  a  Breakwater  against  Chicago.  —  Burr  tried  for  Ti-eason, 
"  not  proven  "  guilty,  and  surrendered  —  to  himself.  —  Of  Bonaparte 
and  other  Usurpers.  —  The  Oldest  dislike  the  Youngest.  —  History  of 
the  Attempts  of  George  III.  and  Bonaparte  to  blockade  without  Ships. 
—  Once  a  Bull  always  a  Bull.  —  Search  of  American  Ships  for  Sea- 
men. —  The  Unwisdom  of  Half-  Apologies.  —  The  American  Embargo 
and  its  Popularity  with  Unmarried  Girls. 


advent  of  the  first  Democratic  brave  to  the 
JL  dispensing  patronage  and  to  the  right  of  taking 
official  scalps,  was  not  followed  by  a  general  emptying 
of  official  chairs  and  the  massacre  of  official  enemies. 
The  thirty-five  ballotings  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives between  Mr.  Jefferson  and  Aaron  Burr  made 
men  anxious,  not  hungry  and  thirsty.  The  fair- 


374    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

minded  Madison  was  appointed  to  the  State  Depart- 
ment; Albert  Gallatin,  the  golden-mouthed,  to  the 
Treasury ;  and  Robert,  not  John  Smith,  to  the  Navy. 
Few  changes  were  made  in  the  ungilt  places ;  although 
the  innocent  public  of  that  day  were  not  a  little  ex- 
,  cited,  at  the  bare  suspicion  that  a  few  dozen  Fed- 
eralists were  removed  for  their  political  opinions. 
The  guilt  of  differing  politically  from  the  administra- 
tion was  not  considered  by  the  President  so  flagrant 
as  to  be  adequately  punished  only  by  exile  from 
office. 

Upon  Mr.  Jefferson  must,  however,  be  laid  the  crime 
of  beginning  the  practice  of  sending  to  Congress  mes- 
sages in  writing,  —  a  beginning  which,  like  the  mes- 
sages themselves,  seems  to  have  no  end.  Since  the 
flood  human  life  is  far  too  short  for  these  Presidential 
essays,  even  without  the  accompanying  documents. 

A  war  with  that  dusky  corsair,  the  Bey  of  Tripoli, 
clouded  the  very  commencement  of  the  new  adminis- 
tration, breaking  finally,  after  lasting  three  years,  into 
a  heavy  shower,  February  9,  1804,  from  the  cannon- 
ading guns  of  young  Decatur's  ship,  the  "  Intrepid,"  — 
a  shower  followed  by  blue-skied  peace.  Commodore 
Preble,  who  with  his  fleet  had  been  dealing  with 
Morocco,  assisted  in  tanning,  by  some  of  Bellona's 
bleaching-powders,  the  sable-peltried  Tripolitan.  The 
result  was  that  the  Bey  turned  to  another  complex- 
ion in  his  treatment  of  Christian  captives. 

In  1802  Ohio  doffed  the  pantalets  and  appeared 
around  the  Union  board  as  a  full-grown  State.  Some 
of  her  settlements  had  grown  so  fast,  and  so  threatened 
to  absorb  the  land  into  building-lots,  that  it  was  feared 


DEMOCRACY    IN   POWER.  375 

for  a  time  that  the  surface  would  be  insufficient  for 
farming  purposes.  The  exodus  of  population  far- 
ther westward,  however,  relieved  the  anxieties  of  its 
genesis,  and  marked  the  first  chapter  of  its  growth. 
The  bivouac  that  had  encamped  on  her  grandly  rolling 
rivers  began  soon  to  join  the  westering  caravan  which 
pitched  their  tents  across  the  Mississippi  against  the 
sunsettings.  A  Hoosier  who  borrows  money  at  two 
per  cent  a  month  to  buy  land  with  may  be  trusted  to 
pay  it  back  in  a  short  time.  Two  to  nothing  that  he 
will  add  from  his  generosity  a  bonus  with  the  return 
of  the  loan. 

Bonaparte,  now  Consul  for  life,  and  in  sore  need  of 
money,  sold  to  us,  for  $  15,000,000,  that  tract  of  coun- 
try stretching  undefinedly  towards  the  Pacific,  and 
called  Louisiana.  Some  of  the  wits  of  that  day  raised 
the  question  whether  the  purchase  lawfully  included 
alligators  of  such  length  that  they  stretched  over  the 
boundary  lines.  Neither  this  great  question,  nor  the 
secondary  one  of  the  right  of  our  government  to  buy 
foreign  territory,  was  mooted  in  the  Supreme  Court, 
and  thus  we  were  spared  an  extra  volume  of  majority 
essays  and  longer  dissenting  opinions.  The  foreign 
pill  was  too  sugar-coated  to  cause  any  wry  faces.  It 
was  a  very  big  sell  —  for  France. 

In  July,  1804,  Aaron  Burr,  Vice-President,  murdered 
Alexander  Hamilton  at  Hoboken.  Some  biographers 
have  attempted,  since  the  death  of  the  future  exile  and 
fugitive  from  justice,  to  lighten  the  heavy  burden 
which  he  carried  for  thirty-three  years  afterwards,  but 
in  vain.  The  public  rarely  reverses  its  first  verdict. 
They  can  seldom  be  made  to  believe  that  its  first 


376    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

look  at  the  piece  was  on  the  wrong  side,  and  no  new 
napping  or  glossing  will  convince  it  that  the  other  is 
the  right  side. 

The  Presidency  took  such  a  fancy  to  Mr.  Jefferson 
that,  at  his  re-election,  in  1804,  he  received  162  out  of 
176  votes  cast ;  C.  C.  Pinckney,  Esquire,  of  South  Caro- 
lina getting  the  other  14.  South  Carolina  then  had 
the  pleasant  little  conceit  of  voting  for  herself,  —  a 
harmless  pastime  that  kept  up  her  peculiar  idea  of  re- 
sistance to  Federal  subjugation,  and  made  a  variety  for 
the  tellers  in  counting  the  contents  of  the  electoral 
urn. 

During  1805  Mr.  Eaton,  the  American  consul  at 
Tunis,  made  an  agreeable  arrangement  with  Haruet 
Caramelli,  the  legitimate  but  exiled  Bashaw  of  Tripoli, 
for  his  restoration  to  his  seat,  badly  filled  by  his  broth- 
er ;  and  to  carry  out  the  plan,  he  started  from  Alexan- 
dria, in  Egypt,  in  company  with  the  sable  Hamet, 
seventy  American  seamen  and  four  hundred  and  thirty 
Arabs.  After  traversing  a  thousand  miles  of  desert 
sands,  he  fought  two  severe  battles,  took  Derne,  the 
capital  city  of  the  chief  province  of  Tripoli,  and  would 
have  deposed  the  cruel  reigning  Bashaw,  and  opened  the 
prison  doors  shut  on  hundreds  of  innocent  Christian 
captives, —  Eaton's  principal  object  in  the  romantic 
expedition,  — but  for  a  hasty,  jealous,  and  disreputable 
treaty  got  up  between  Tobias  Lear,  Consul-General  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  Bey,  whereby  we  agreed 
to  pay  the  crowned  bandit  $  60,000  in  silver,  instead 
of  in  leaden  pieces,  for  the  ransom  of  our  sailors  en- 
meshed, like  flies,  in  the  old  spider's  web. 

The  nation  never  liked  that  play  of  Lear.     They 


DEMOCRACY  IN  POWER.  377 

always  thought  of  this  its  principal  act,  with  the  Earl 
of  Kent :  — 

"  There  is  division, 

Although  as  yet  the  face  of  it  be  covered 
With  mutual  cunning  'twixt  Albany  and  Cornwall." 

Had  these  successive  and  armed  protests  by  America 
against  the  Barbary  habit  of  enslaving  white  Chris- 
tian captives,  taken  in  war,  been  properly  seconded  by 
the  European  powers,  the  dusk  Mussulman  of  North- 
ern Africa  would  have  been  then  converted  from  the 
old  Eoman  practices  to  which  they  willingly  succeeded, 
—  practices  which  the  author  of  Don  Quixote,  himself 
an  Algerine  captive  for  five  years,  had  punctured 
with  his  sharp  quill  over  two  centuries  before,  and 
which  Lord  Exmouth,  with  a  British  fleet,  so  riddled 
with. shotted  logic,  in  1816,  as  to  silence  forever. 

"While  the  play  of  Lear  was  so  badly  acted  on  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  Michigan,  toddling  up 
from  between  the  lake  coasts  that  bordered  her  double 
peninsula,  left  her  ancient  name  of  Wayne  County 
and  the  protecting  hand  of  Indiana,  and  assumed  an 
independent  territorial  status.  Her  lymphatic  tem- 
perament enabled  her  to  suck  up  through  her  many 
aquatic  ducts  an  arterial  circulation  which  helped  her 
to  stand  pretty  successfully  the  dry-cuppings  of  Ohio, 
Pennsylvania,  and  New  York.  In  straits  often  she 
has  worked  her  way  with  moderate  success  through 
her  Superior  Lakes  and  water-courses  to  the  open  paths 
of  seaboard  trade.  The  pictured  rocks  of  her  great 
northern  lake  illustrate  in  lithography,  rarely  copied, 
some  traits  which  she  shares  with  no  others.  Fortu- 
nately for  her  future  independence,  the  intervention 


378    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

of  Lake  Michigan  prevents  her  territory  from  being 
laid  out  in  city  lots  by  Chicago. 

The  American  Cain,  restless  and  uneasy,  haunted  by 
the  pale  ghost  of  Hobokeu,  set  on  foot  in  1806  an  ex- 
pedition designed  either  to  slice  off  a  piece  of  American 
territory  west  of  the  Alleghanies,  and  to  give  it  as  a 
morce.au  to  Aaron  the  First,  to  be  crowned  at  New  Or- 
leans, his  future  capital ;  or  to  rid  Mexico  of  a  part  of 
her  troublesome  northern  possessions  and  to  establish 
over  it  the  dynasty  of  the  Burrs.  Tried  at  Eichmond, 
Virginia,  in  1807,  before  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  he 
had  the  honor  of  being  enclosed  in  the  superb  amber 
vase  of  Wirt's  rhetoric  for  immortal  preservation,  but 
the  misfortune  to  be  dismissed  on  insufficient  proof  to 
the  chained  companionship  of  the  dreaded  ghost. 

Bonaparte,  tired  of  his  consulate  for  life,  and 
anointed  Emperor  December  2,  1804,  by  a  priest 
whom  he  called  from  Rome  to  Paris  for  that  purpose, 
known  as  Pope  Pius  VII.,  had  raised  against  himself 
and  his  family  pretensions  the  more  ancient  usurpers 
of  Europe,  whose  equally  bold  seizure  of  the  right  to 
govern  people,  and  to  take  their  money  whereon  to 
live  in  ease,  was  veiled  and  historically  disguised  by  a 
few  score  years  of  unrighteous  possession.  Of  course 
the  ancient  usurpers  despised  and  made  faces  at  the 
newest.  Armies  composed  of  thousands  of  common 
people  —  farmers,  mechanics,  and  poor  laborers  —  pad- 
ded in  bright-colored  clothes  out  of  moneys  borrowed 
on  their  credit  and  to  be  repaid  by  their  children,  were 
hurled  by  these  usurpers  at  each  other  at  Ulm,  Aus- 
terlitz,  and  Jena ;  and  after  the  smoke  of  the  shocks 
rolled  off,  it  was  found  that  all  the  crowned  graspers 


DEMOCRACY   IN   POWER.  379 

were  badly  shaken  up  and  shattered,  and  had  limped 
away  exceedingly  hurt  in  pride  and  limb,  excepting 
England  only,  which,  mistress  of  the  water  by  the 
victory  of  Nelson  at  Trafalgar,  in  1805,  thrust  her 
hated  trident  into  the  face  of  the  master  of  the  land. 
The  sea-tossings  of  the  combatants  became  profitable 
to  our  neutral  commerce,  which  picked  up  out  of  the 
ports  of  each  the  articles  needed  by  the  other,  and 
laid  them  down  on  the  rival  wharves.  England  had 
become  too  much  of  a  trader  and  shopkeeper  to  see 
such  results  with  complacency,  even  if,  as  a  bel- 
ligerent, she  could  not  participate  in  the  dividends. 
And  so,  in  May,  1806,  she  attempted  to  inaugurate 
against  France  —  in  addition  to  actual  hostilities  — 
a  paper  blockade,  by  declaring,  in  a  well-sealed  and 
highly  respectable  looking  document,  about  two  thirds 
of  the  Continent  of  Europe,  including  the  French 
territory  and  its  dependencies,  in  a  state  of  blockade. 
Without  a  blockading  squadron  to  deliver  this  docu- 
ment and  to  enforce  the  blockade,  this  declaration  was 
an  empty  bravado,  and  a  fraud  on  the  rights  of  neu- 
trals. This  dog-in-the-manger  device  to  stop  the 
trade  it  could  not  supply  provoked  the  newest 
usurper  to  a  like  policy.  Napoleon,  equally  blinded 
by  his  resentments,  and  equally  unconscientious  in  his 
handling  of  international  law,  issued  from  Berlin  a 
counter  document,  also  well  sealed  and  incapable  of  de- 
livery, declaring  the  British  Isles  in  a  state  of  blockade. 
Without  ships  —  those  marine  constables — to  serve 
papers  and  bring  offenders  within  maritime  juris- 
diction, these  orders  and  decrees  became  mischievous 
threats,  making  lawful  trade  piracy,  and  subjecting 


380     THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

neutral  merchant  vessels  to  arrest,  detention,  search, 
and  condemnation.  England  now  put  forth  another 
pretension.  As  by  the  feudal  law  it  was  held  that 
"  once  a  subject  always  a  subject,"  of  course  a  fortu- 
nate Bull  remained  a  Bull,  even  when  seeking  work  or 
protection  on  an  American  vessel.  American  ships 
were  thus  required  to  stop  on  the  high  seas  and  be 
searched  for  truant  English  stock.  Such  a  bull  Eng- 
land might  make  of  herself;  but  she  was  so  angry 
as  not  to  see  that  neutrals  would  not  become  such 
silly  calves  as  to  be  driven  off  by  these  big-looking 
shouts. 

The  question  was  sharply  stated  by  the  Leopard, 
a  British  man-of-war,  to  the  Chesapeake,  an  American 
frigate,  on  board  of  which  it  was  claimed  were  four 
British  seamen.  The  refusal  to  permit  the  ship's  hold 
to  be  looked  into  not  pleasing  the  Leopard,  she  fell 
unexpectedly  upon  the  little  frigate  and  tore  the 
supposed  bulls  with  horny  claws  out  of  the  grasp  of 
the  American.  The  sight  offended  all  America,  espe- 
cially as  it  turned  out  that  three  of  the  four  seamen 
were  American  citizens. 

President  Jefferson  expressed  the  national  resent- 
ment in  a  proclamation  interdicting  all  British  ships 
entering  our  ports.  Great  Britain  made  another  bull 
by  half  apologizing  and  delivering  up  two  of  the  four 
seamen.  The  lesson  of  the  stamp  duties  had  not 
illuminated  the  density  of  George  III.  He  had  not 
learned  that  half-apologies  are  confessions  of  wrong, 
but  no  atonement. 

Further  experiments  were  mutually  made  by  the 
two  enraged  fighters  on  neutral  rights  and  interna- 


DEMOCRACY  IN  POWER.  381 

tional  decencies.  In  November  Great  Britain  forbade 
any  one  trading  with  France;  and  France,  equally 
enterprising,  ordered  the  stoppage  of  all  trade  with 
England.  Our  government  replied  to  these  illegal 
proceedings  by  an  embargo  on  all  vessels  in  our  ports, 
foreign  and  domestic.  From  December,  1807,  until 
March,  1809,  marine  beaux  were  abundant,  and  young 
ladies  joyous.  When  the  embargo  was  raised  the  hopes 
of  the  latter  sank.  They  became  more  desponding  still 
when  the  government  forbade  all  commercial  corre- 
spondence with  France  and  England. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  UNITED  STATES  AT  SEA;   OR,  MADISON'S  CRUISE. 
1809-1817. 

The  Captain  and  Officers  of  the  "  Seventeen  Sisters  "  which  put  to  Sea  in 
a  Gale.  —  Diplomatic  Talks.  —  Difference  between  one's  own  Cows 
gored,  and  one's  own  Bull  in  a  Neighbor's  Field  stoned,  exemplified. 

—  Cave  canem.  —  Bonaparte  improves  the  Code  Napoleon.  —  Execu- 
tions before  Trials.  —  Horace  Greeley  fights  benevolently  into  the 
World.  —  Louisiana  and  her  Vivacious  Debts  taken  in;  what  sweet- 
ened them.  —  Witch-Hazel  Rods  of  Clay,  Cheves,  etc.,  dip  to  the  Na- 
tional Mines  of  Feeling.  —  Our  Second  Wrestling-Match  with  England. 

—  The  Hull-sale  Surrender  of  Michigan.  —  Colonel  Cass  breaks  his 
Sword,  and  gets  an  Anglo-phobia.  —  Better  Hulls  on   the   Water.  — 
America  marries  the  Sea.  —  A  WTasp  on  a  Frolic.  —  Marine  Flirta- 
tions and  Engagements.  —  The  Constitution,  an  Old  Sea-Flirt  ;  her 
rapid  Winning  and  Wooing  of  the  Java.  —  South  Carolina  loses  a  Presi- 
dential Candidate.  —  Of  the  Three  Armies  afield.  — Harrison  at  Tippe- 
canoe  and  the  Thames.  —  Colonel  R.  M.  Johnson's  life-long  Chase  for 
Tecumseh's  Scalp.  —  Toronto  emptied  and  filled.  —  General  Brown,  a 
Real  Man,  in  Spite  of  his  Name.  —  General  Wade  Hampton.  —  Conrt- 
Martials,  and  how  they  touch  off  Military   Charges.  —  The   United 
States  at  Sea  on  Land.  —  The  Hornet  on  a  Peacock.  —  An  Immortal 
Word  wnmg  from  a  Mortal  Moment.  —  Commodore  Perry.  —  General 
Scott  improves  the  Niagara  Frontier  for  Hack-Drivers.  —  Macdonough 
charges  Lake  Champlain  with  Heroic  Ingredients.  —  English  Marine 
Parades.  —  Cotton    Breastworks  at   New   Orleans.  —  Their   Feminine 
Adoption.  —  The  Treaty  of  Peace   and   its   Wonderful  Omissions.- — 
Costs  and  Gains  of  the  War.  —  The  Hartford  Convention  and  its  Eques- 
trian Exploits.  —  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Invisible  Ink. 

TAMES  MADISON,  who  for  eight  years  past  had 
|    been  first  mate  on  our  national  craft,  was  in  1809 
promoted  by  its  owners,  th'e  people,  to  be  Captain,  — 


THE  UNITED   STATES  AT   SEA.  383 

Mr.  C.  C.  Pinckney,  of  South  Carolina,  receiving  a  com- 
plimentary vote,  as  a  Palmetto  fillup.  The  captain's 
principal  officers  were  :  first  mate,  or  Secretary  of  State, 
Eobert  Smith ;  second  mate,  or  Secretary  of  War,  Wil- 
liam Eustis  ;  purser,  or  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Albert 
Gallatin ;  boatswain,  or  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  Paul 
Hamilton  ;  and  Caesar  A.  Piodney,  piper,  or  Attorney- 
General.  Much  need  was  there  of  a  judicious  set  of 
officers  on  the  quarter-deck,  as  well  as  of  a  good  crew  in 
the  forecastle ;  for  the  Seventeen  Sisters  were  about  to 
put  to  sea,  with  high  storms  blowing  off  and  on  the  coast. 
Much  talk  was  there,  as  soon  as  Mr.  Madison  en- 
tered upon  his  duties,  between  British  envoys,  Mr. 
Erskine  first  and  Mr.  Jackson  afterwards,  on  the  one 
side,  and  our  Mr.  Smith  on  the  other,  about  our  Non- 
intercourse  Act.  Of  course  the  Britons  did  not  like  to 
have  their  own  commercial  cows  gored  by  our  bulls ; 
although  they  had  enjoyed  immensely  the  sight  of 
their  own  unmuzzled  Durhams  pushing  wildly  among 
our  young  cattle.  The  British  government  —  or,  rather, 
their  accredited  agent,  Mr.  Erskine  —  promised  to  re- 
peal the  obnoxious  orders  in  council.  Taking  the 
principals  at  their  agent's  word,  our  government  good- 
naturedly  proclaimed  the  renewal  of  commercial  inter- 
course with  England.  Thereupon,  George  III.  —  now 
entering  the  fiftieth  year  of  king-craft,  without  any 
improvement  of  his  crass  German  notions  by  a  cross 
with  British  principles  of  shop-keeping  —  repudiated 
the  acts  of  his  agent.  The  friendly  hand  we  had  offered 
we  now  took  back,  giving  a  perceptible  contraction  to 
its  muscles  as  we  drew  it  in.  For  three  years  we 
pocketed  our  fists  and  indignities. 


384    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

In  1809  England  had  stationed  cruisers  off  our 
coast  to  seize  our  merchantmen,  and  send  them  in  as 
prizes  to  her  ports.  Every  American  ship-owner  saw 
mosaicked  at  the  outlet  of  every  American  harbor  the 
warning,  cave  canem,  without  being  at  liberty  to  stone 
the  dog  which  flew  at  him.  Bonaparte,  blood  red  with 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  victories,  turning  in  cold, 
dynastic  selfishness  from  the  heart-faithful  but  child- 
less Josephine,  and  drawing  to  her  place  the  reluctant, 
refrigerating  Maria  Louise,  undismayed  by  the  fear  of 
our  junction  with  the  fifth  coalition  formed  against  him 
by  England,  Austria,  Spain,  and  Portugal,  imitated  for 
a  time  the  swaggering  injustice  of  England  towards  us. 
In  March,  1810,  improving  upon  the  Code  Napoleon, 
by  execution  before  suit,  he  decreed  the  seizure  and 
summary  condemnation  of  all  American  vessels  enter- 
ing French  ports.  This  boyish,  pouting,  and  self-ex- 
tinguishing policy  he  gave  up  in  November  following. 
England  was  left  alone  in  keeping  unneighborly  mas- 
tiffs. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  midst  of  the  effervescence  of  na- 
tional sediment  thus  foaming  up  in  yeasty  ebullition, 
Horace  Greeley,  February  3,  1811,  fought  into  life. 
Ever  since  that  successful  contest,  the  world  has  ad- 
vanced with  quickened  forces.  Benevolence  felt  rein- 
forced by  combative  intellect,  which  borrowed  the 
club  of  logic  and  strong  adjectives  to  persuade  error  to 
keep  the  ways  of  tribunitial  thought.  Soon  after  Mr. 
Greeley's  birth,  Mr.  Smith  gave  up  the  State  Depart- 
ment to  James  Monroe,  who,  for  the  three  years  fol- 
lowing, found  ample  employment  for  his  executive 
abilities,  in  the  double  duties  of  this  branch  added 
to  those  of  the  War  bureau. 


THE  UNITED   STATES  AT   SEA.  385 

In  April,  1812,  our  French  sister,  Louisiana,  brought 
her  vivacity,  gayety,  and  debts  into  the  family.  Her 
high  spirits  were  needed  to  stimulate  the  action,  and 
her  sugar  to  sweeten  the  waters  of  strife,  now  effec- 
tually stirred  between  America  and  England,  whose 
bottomless  pretensions  had  become  intolerable.  Our 
public  debt  had  become  reduced  to  about  $45,000,000, 
and  our  population  augmented  to  seven  and  a  half 
millions.  It  needed  not  the  witch-hazel  rods  of  the 
eloquent  Clay,  Calhoun,  Langdon  Cheves,  and  others, 
to  dip  to  and  find  the  mines  of  national  wealth  and 
national  feeling.  Both  were  ready.  At  last,  June  4, 
1812,  after  the  lapse  of  twenty-nine  years,  we  found 
ourselves  in  a  second  wrestling-match  with  Great  Brit- 
ain. Our  first  grapple  was  near  Detroit,  and  on  the 
Canadian  frontier,  where  a  defeat,  under  Colonel  Van 
Home,  and  a  success,  under  Colonel  Miller,  equalized 
losses  and  gains,  through  July  and  August.  But  the 
base  Hull-sale  surrender,  without  a  blow,  of  Detroit,  of 
an  army  of  two  thousand  men,  and  the  entire  Territory 
of  Michigan,  by  its  cowardly  or  treacherous  governor, 
caused  our  captain,  officers,  and  entire  crew  to  explode 
in  very  indignant  terms.  Colonel  Lewis  Cass,  then 
commanding  one  of  the  regiments,  snapped  his  sword 
in  two  pieces,  rather  than  surrender  it  whole  to  the 
British  General  Brock.  He  took  such  an  Anglo-phobia 
at  this  time,  that  the  next  fifty  years  could  not  cure  it. 

Fortunately  we  had  better  hulls  on  the  water  than 
on  the  land. 

August  19,  1812,  Captain  Isaac  Hull,  in  the  frigate 
Constitution,  fought  the  British  Guerriere,  and  after 
knocking  down  every  mast  and  spar  and  one  third  of 
17  Y 


386    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

her  crew,  compelled  her  to  throw  up  the  sponge.  The 
mourning  put  on  three  days  before  for  the  loss,  by 
General  William  Hull,  of  Michigan,  and  the  army  of 
the  Northwest,  was  now  put  off  for  the  bridal-wreath 
presented  by  Captain  Isaac  Hull  to  America,  on  her 
marriage  to  the  sea.  Like  her  spouse,  the  Ocean,  the 
bride  hastened  to  cast  her  weeds.  The  pallor  of  de- 
feat gave  place  to  the  summoned  roses  of  joy.  Upon 
the  crimson  flushes  the  British  bees  now  sought  to 
light  and  to  extract  their  carnation. 

In  October,  the  British  tars,  in  a  Frolic,  set  out  to 
tease  the  delighted  groom,  but  a  Wasp,  hovering  near, 
made  for  the  frolicsome  bee,  and  in  three  quarters  of 
an  hour  so  stung  it,  that  its  shattered  wings  were  only 
fit  for  microscopical  studies.  All  the  officers  and  crew 
of  the  Frolic,  four  only  excepted,  were  killed  or 
wounded ;  while  the  Wasp,  although  carrying  fewer 
guns,  had  only  ten  killed  or  injured.  A  few  days 
afterwards  the  frigate  United  States,  commanded  by 
Decatur,  —  whom  we  left  eight  years  since  before 
Tripoli,  clearing  out  its  wretched  Bey,  —  engaged  the 
British  Macedonian,  and  took  such  a  fancy  to  her  that, 
after  some  violent  flirtation,  she  completely  won  her. 
This  engagement  went  hard  with  the  proud,  stiff  old 
people  in  England,  but  a  repetition  of  this  sort  of 
match-making  did  much  to  reconcile  them  to  the  first. 
The  second  engagement  took  place  on  Pacific  ground, 
off  the  coast  of  Brazil,  between  that  old  sea-flirt,  the 
Constitution,  looking  out,  not  for  coffee  or  sparrows, 
but  for  a  marine  flirtation,  and  the  Java,  a  buxom 
frigate,  long-waisted  and  well  padded  with  materials, 
adorned  with  heavy  war  jewelry,  constituting  very  at- 


THE   UNITED   STATES  AT   SEA.  387 

tractive  charms,  at  her  waist.  In  less  than  two  hours 
after  their  acquaintance,  these  ardent  strangers  became 
.so  entangled  in  each  other's  fortunes,  that  the  Java 
gave  up,  like  a  true  mistress,  all  her  future  to  her  fond 
and  persistent  lover.  When  the  news  of  this  wooing 
reached  the  stuffy  old  parents  at  home,  they  were  fran- 
tic with  rage.  The  family  pride  was  alarmed  and 
wounded.  They  immediately  sent  out  a  large  fleet  to 
watch  that  new  and  fashionable  American  promenade, 
the  sea,  to  prevent  any  more  flirtations  and  engage- 
ments like  poor  Guerriere's  and  the  unfortunate  Java's. 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Madison  was  re-elected  Captain  by 
one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  votes ;  De  Witt  Clinton 
receiving  eighty-nine.  Mr.  C.  C.  Pinckney,  now  sixty- 
six  years  old,  and  convinced  that  his  capital  was  too 
small,  abandoned  the  business ;  and  as  Mr.  Calhoun 
was  yet  only  thirty,  and  constitutionally  ineligible, 
South  Carolina  was  reduced  to  the  humiliation  of 
voting  either  for  a  Virginian  or  a  New-Yorker. 

Notwithstanding  her  successes  on  the  water,  America 
by  no  means  abandoned  the  land. 

She  raised  and  set  on  foot,  although  some  of  course, 
as  usual,  got  on  horseback,  three  armies.  The  first 
of  these  was  the  Army  of  the  West,  under  General 
William  Henry  Harrison,  whose  business  it  was  made 
to  chastise  back  into  submissive  quiet  the  Indian  tribes, 
which  England  had  enticed  out  to  the  pillage  and 
harrying  of  our  frontier  settlers ;  a  business  which  he 
successfully  prosecuted  at  Fort  Meigs,  at  Tippecanoe, 
and  again,  in  October,  1 813,  at  the  Thames.  At  this  last 
engagement  somebody  killed  Tecumseh,  and  thus  gave 
Colonel  E.  M.  Johnson  employment  for  the  rest  of  his 


388    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

life  in  vindicating  his  right  to  the  Shawnee's  scalp. 
The  red  chief  thus,  like  Homer  and  others,  caused 
after  his  death  more  contention  than  during  his  life. 
Soon  after  the  Thames  battle,  General  Harrison  re- 
paired to  Buffalo,  where,  in  consequence  of  some  un- 
explained reason,  —  perhaps  overcome  by  its  vigorous 
Board  of  Trade,  or  seized  by  its  enterprising  forwarders, 

—  he  was  transported  into  a  resignation,  and  to  Ohio. 
The  second  army  was  that  of  the  Centre,  under  Gen- 
eral Dearborn,  Jefferson's  Secretary  of  War,  and  now 
Commander-in-Chief  of  all  the  forces  deployed  along 
the  southern  shore  of  Lake  Ontario  and  the  Niagara 
frontier.     A  portion  of  this  army,  in  April,  1813,  left 
Sackett's  Harbor,  and  landing  at  York,  now  Toronto, 
took  hold  of  it,  and,  shaking  it  empty  of  British  and 
Indians,  left  it  so  dry,  that  vigorous  drinking  since 
has  scarcely  sufficed  to  absorb  back  any  considerable 
numbers  of  the  brick-colored  originals,  although  some- 
thing  has   succeeded   in  getting  up  very  successful 
exhibitions  of  English  red  and  white  skins.     While 
General  Dearborn  was  absent  from  Sackett's  Harbor, 
Sir  George  Prevost  thought  it  a  good  time  to  sail  in. 
He  landed  with  one  thousand  men;  but  General  Brown, 

—  a  real,  actual  man,  although  disguised  by  this  myth- 
ical name,  —  rallied  the  local  militia,  and,  setting  on 
the  baronet  and  his   thousand,  took  a  large  number 
of  them,  and  held  them  as  mutilated  specimens  of 
soldiers  at  leisure.     General  Dearborn  soon  after  re- 
signed, and  General  Wilkinson  —  who  had  been  tried 
and  acquitted  for  his  too  great  intimacy,  while  in  com- 
mand at  the  Southwest,  witli  the  American  Cain  and 
his  schemes  —  succeeded  him ;  the  only  success  that 


THE   UNITED   STATES   AT   SEA.  389 

he  ever  had,  as  he  always  had  the  ill-assorted  habit  of 
never  agreeing  or  co-operating  with  any  one,  especially 
on  critical  occasions.  Like  a  rocking-chair  in  moving 
time,  he  took  up  more  room  than  could  be  scared,  and 
was  pretty  sure  to  be  broken  when  required  for  use. 

The  third  army  was  that  of  the  North,  placed  under 
General  Wade  Hampton,  grandfather  of  that  leader  of 
the  Confederate  black  cavalry  in  the  late  Rebellion, 
who  waded  to  his  horse's  bits  in  the  blood  of  his  loyal 
countrymen,  in  order  to  "keep  the  black  bipeds  in 
the  South  bridled  and  saddled  to  carry  the  unwading 
Hamptons.  The  army  of  the  North,  twelve  thousand 
strong,  was  stationed  on  Lake  Charnplain,  and  was 
destined  to  co-operate  with  Wilkinson's  for  the  reduc- 
tion of  Montreal,  then  holding  only  a  small  garrison 
of  six  hundred ;  but  the  mutual  enmity  of  the  gen- 
erals, growing  out  of  old  quarrels  at  New  Orleans, 
frustrated  all  co-operation.  Each  drew  himself  into 
warm  winter  quarters,  nursing  his  private  grievances, 
as  Mrs.  Gamp  did  her  special  infirmities,  while  the 
poor  unnursed,  suffering  patient,  the  campaign,  took 
care  of  itself.  Of  course  Montreal  was  not  reduced, 
except  to  a  satisfactory  smile  over  the  military  pouting 
of  the  un-cooperating  commanders.  The  Secretary  of 
War  preferred  charges  against  Wilkinson.  The  charges, 
as  usual  when  touched  by  court-martials,  went  off  in 
flashes  in  the  pan.  The  campaign  of  1813,  rammed 
down  with  the  double  loads,  the  armies  of  the  Centre 
and  the  North,  went  off  in  the  same  way. 

The  United  States  were  now  more  at  sea  on  land 
than  on  the  sea  itself. 

Early  in  the  year  1813,  tne  sloop  Hornet,  roaming  at 


390      THE   COMIC   HISTORY  OF   THE   UNITED  STATES. 


THE   UNITED   STATES  AT   SEA.  391 

will  over  the  green  fields  of  water,  pricked  on  by  Cap- 
tain James  Lawrence,  lit  on  the  British  Peacock,  and 
so  worried  her,  that  in  fifteen  minutes  she  fluttered 
down,  down  into  the  opening  green  gulfs  below,  with 
all  her  bright,  well-spread  colors.  Promoted  to  the 
Chesapeake,  manned  or  rather  unmanned  by  an  un- 
driUed,  miscellaneous  crew  which  had  drifted  on  her 
decks,  the  brave  Lawrence,  counselled  more  by  a  chiv- 
alric  honor  than  by  a  cool  prudence,  accepted  the  mur- 
derous, Burr-like  challenge  of  the  well-practised  Shan- 
non, carrying  a  picked  and  veteran  crew  and  corps 
of  marines.  The  ill-handled,  entangled,  and  disabled 
Chesapeake  was  boarded,  and  the  intrepid  commander, 
carried  below  with  a  mortal  wound,  stammered  out 
that  immortal  order  which  hurtles  hotly  through  histo- 
ries and  navies,  "Don't  give  up  the  ship." 

On  Lake  Erie,  Commodore  Perry,  in  September, 
1813,  with  a  small  squadron  embraced  and  took  a  su- 
perior British  fleet,  announcing  his  resisted  possession 
in  another  lively,  well-planted  message,  which  floats 
like  a  buoy  in  the  crowded  harbor  of  historical  anchor- 
age, —  "  We  have  met  the  enemy  and  they  are  ours." 

During  this  year,  as  in  the  preceding,  American  pri- 
vateers swept  from  the  wavy  floor  of  the  ocean  hun- 
dreds of  merchantmen.  Forthwith  English  courts, 
English  premiers,  and  English  writers  on  interna- 
tional law  bristled  with  freshly  sharpened  horror  at 
the  sin  of  privateering,  —  a  most  un-Christian  practice 
they  averred,  as  it  tended  violently  to  abridge  the  ma- 
rine wealth  of  England. 

In  1814  a  varied  war  business  was  transacted  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  Great  Britain.  In  July 


392     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

—  that  month  for  excursions  to  Niagara  Falls  —  Gen- 
erals Scott  and  Eipley  crossed  the  hurrying  river  near 
the  cataract,  and  took  Fort  Erie,  which,  fortunately  for 
the  hackmen,  they  left  like  a  toll-gate,  to  entice  yearly 
from  travellers  its  original  cost.  As  if  to  increase  the 
wonders  of  this  taking  neighborhood,  two  days  after 
the  capture  of  Fort  Erie,  the  battle  of  Chippewa  was 
fought,, in  which  bayonets  were  actually  crossed,  —  a 
rare  checker-work,  although  often  talked  of  in  those 
select  romances,  the  despatches  of  raw  militia  gener- 
als, who,  in  their  first  sight  of  glancing  steel  and  first 
smell  of  villanous  saltpetre,  see  many  things  crosswise 
and  crooked.  Fifteen  days  later,  Winfield  Scott  made 
a  ghostly  spectacle,  at  Lundy's  Lane,  of  great  numbers 
of  well-seasoned  British  Eegulars. 

Fortunate  Niagara  !  in  owning  so  many  wonders, 

"  The  moving  accidents  of  flood  and  field." 

Human  phosphates  are  here  most  advantageously  di- 
luted with  large  parts  of  uncounted  water. 

Meanwhile,  the  veteran  English  squadrons  which 
had  served  under  Wellington,  in  Spain  and  Portugal, 
glorified  by  victories  over  Ney,  Massena,  Marmont, 
Soult,  and  Joseph  Bonaparte,  —  their  bullet-slitted 
flags  inscribed  "  Torres  Vedras,"  "  Talavera,"  "  Ciudad 
Eodrigo,"  "Almeida,"  "Salamanca,"  "Madrid,"  and 
"  Vittoria,"  —  mustering  fourteen  thousand  men,  and  i 
led  by  Sir  George  Prevost,  pushed  down  from  Canada 
upon  Plattsburg,  where  General  Macomb  had  assem- 
bled fifteen  hundred  men.  Crossing  the  little  river 
Saranac,  on  one  side  of  which  Plattsburg  stood,  in  mod- 
est, village  quiet,  Macomb  posted  his  men.  Like  cedar 


THE   UNITED   STATES   AT   SEA.  393 

posts,  these  unseasoned  troops  stood  rooted  to  the 
soil,  stubbornly  refusing  to  bend  before  the  furious 
storm  of  grape  and  canister  which  swept  through 
them  for  four  days.  While  this  heroic  endurance  was 
maintained  on  the  land  side,  in  front  of  the  village  and 
on  the  vitreous  surface  of  Lake  Champlain,  Command- 
ant Thomas  Macdonough,  on  the  morning  of  Septem- 
ber 11,  with  a  squadron  of  fourteen  small  ^vessels, 
carrying  86  guns  and  850  officers  and  men,  anchoring 
in  the  bay  and  awaiting  the  approach  of  a  British 
fleet  of  sixteen  ships,  with  95  guns  and  1,000  men, 
so  charged  the  common  trading  waters  of  the  lake 
with  soul-lifting  influences,  that  even  commerce  seems 
to  bear  there  its  pennons  more  stiffly  ever  since,  and  or- 
dinary smacks  to  kiss  the  wind  with  a  lover's  trancing 
relish. 

Worsted  in  square  fighting,  squadron  to  squadron,  and 
vessel  to  vessel,  the  enemy  —  not  having  the  fear  of  this 
History  before  their  eyes,  and  finding  it  easier  to  ha- 
rass unarmed  merchantmen  and  to  pillage  unprotected 
coasts  —  ravaged  the  Chesapeake,  burned  the  Capitol  at 
Washington,  —  whose  corner-stone  had  been  laid  by  the 
great  American  himself  in  1793,  —  and  laid  in  ashes 
the  President's  house.  Unfortunately,  the  Washing- 
ton Monument  was  not  yet  begun ;  and  thus  by  its 
escape  made  the  destruction  as  unpardonable  by  taste 
as  it  was  by  the  code  of  nations.  Baltimore  pluck 
defended  Baltimore  beauty  from  attacks  by  land  and 
water ;  but  the  dry  goods  and  shipping  of  Alexandria 
were  bravely  captured  and  taken  prisoners.  Weary 
of  the  marine  parades  before  New  York,  Newport, 
and  Stonington,  at  the  North,  and  Mobile,  at  the 
17* 


394    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

South,  a  descent  upon  the  city  of  New  Orleans  was 
finally  planned  by  the  British  military  commander, 
with  fifteen  thousand  hardy  and  well-seasoned  vet- 
erans, led  by  Sir  E.  Pakenham.  To  two  thousand 
of  them  it  was  a  sudden  descent  to  Avernus.  Their 
shades,  on  every  recurring  8th  of  January,  have 
since  been  vexed  by  the  sad  rites  of  oratory,  poured 
out  on.  every  American  stump  and  platform.  Cot- 
ton for  the  first  time  was  here  invested  with  bel- 
ligerent rights,  from  its  use  by  General  Jackson  and 
his  six  thousand  troops  as  breastworks.  It  has  ever 
since  been  roundly  employed  by  American  ladies  in 
the  same  way  against  their  ardent  admirers.  The 
result  in  the  latter  case,  however,  has  usually  been, 
not  to  repel  but  to  heighten  the  vivacity  of  the 
attack ;  and,  unlike  that  at  New  Orleans,  to  procure 
the  surrender  of  the  party  with  the  cotton-works. 

The  battle  of  New  Orleans  was  fought  in  ignorance 
of  the  treaty  of  peace  between  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain,  signed  twenty-five  days  previously, 
December  14,  1814,  at  Ghent, —  an  agreement  which, 
like  frequent  make-ups  of  other  quarrels,  was  wholly 
silent  upon  the  questions  which  had  caused  the  long 
and  harassing  contention. 

On  these  questions  the  United  States  were  left  at 
sea. 

The  war  had  cost  thirty  thousand  lives  and  over 
$  100,000,000 ;  but  we  gained  flags,  fame,  self-confi- 
dence, a  fine  crop  of  candidates,  and  subjects  for 
speeches.  Through  the  annealing  flames  we  came 
out  blue  steel. 

During   the   December   descent   on   New   Orleans, 


THE   UNITED   STATES  AT   SEA.  395 

delegates  from  five  of  the  New  England  States  took 
Hartford  and  used  it  to  pass  some  resolutions  against 
the  mode  in  which,  as  they  asserted,  those  States  had 
been  left  out  in  the  cold,  bare  and  unprotected  by  the 
government.  Many  conventions  have  been  since  held 
at  the  same  place  and  gathered  up  denunciations  with 
characteristic  American  fervor;  but  this  one  has  got 
somehow  astride  of  history,  and  ridden  it  without 
bridle  or  stirrups. 

In  1816  the  second  national  bank  was  chartered, 
with  a  capital  of  $35,000,000,  lifting  the  country 
from  suspension  to  specie  payments.  Mr.  Calhoun, 
its  projector  and  the  supporter  of  a  high  tariff,  lived 
to  denounce  both.  Mr.  Clay  and  Mr.  Webster,  his 
triangulating  rivals,  also  survived  to  balance  with 
changing  faces  the  changed  front  of  their  Presidential 
competitor.  The  strong  heats  of  party,  in  all  times 
and  countries,  bring  out  characters  and  lines  invisible 
before. 

In  December,  1816,  Indiana,  the  nineteenth  State, 
came  to  Washington  bearing  in  her  hands  a-maize-ing 
reasons  for  her  admission. 


CHAPTER 

THE   ERA  OF  GOOD-WILL  ;  OR,  MONROE'S  NESTING. 
1817-1825. 

Why  Byron  did  not  write  sometimes.  —  Application.  —  Rainbow  after 
the  Shower.  —  The  Happy  Family.  —  An  Inlaid  Cabinet.  —  Virginia's 
Dower  Rights  in  the  Presidency.  — Five  New  States.  —  The  Three 
M's.  —  Proof  from  the  Census  of  1820  that  Chicago  had  not  started.  — 
The  Missouri  Compromise.  —  A  Good  Bridle  until  used.  —  Florida 
bought  in  1819.  —  What  we  got  over  the  Bargain.  —  The  Florida 
Keys.  —  The  Dry  Tortugas  thrown  in.  — The  Dews  fortunately  left.  — 
A  Cracked  Cup  In  the  Family  Cupboard.  —  The  Monroe  Doctrine. 

"  \  T  7  PI Y  do  you  not  write  now  ? "  inquired  a  friend 

V  V  of  Byron  in  one  of  the  fitful  pauses  of  his 
galloping  author  life. 

"  Because  I  am  happy  now." 

So  reply  the  uneventful,  unproductive  felicities  of 
Monroe.'s  term  to  the  distressed  hunter  after  historical 
sensations. 

After  the  showery  storm  of  Madison's  aquatic  epoch, 
rainbows  came  out  in  millennial  blendings.  Warm  sun- 
shine lay  upon  all  the  land.  Under  it  the  happy 
family  dwelt  in  peace.  Federal  and  Republican  inlaid 
the  Cabinet.  Virginia  was  satisfied  with  the  fourth 
President.  She  had  got  her  thirds.  The  humble 
eighteen  others  believed  in  Virginia  Presidents.  They 
were  content.  It  was  Solomon's  reign  of  peace  para- 
graphed between  David's  wars  and  Behoboarn's  troubles. 


THE  ERA   OF   GOOD-WILL.  397 

Five  Territories  took  advantage  of  the  open  doors  to 
step  into  family  relations.  Among  the  five  were  the 
three  leading  M's,  Maine,  Mississippi,  and  Missouri. 
Chicago  —  we  mean  Illinois  —  took  the  year  1818  to 
enter.  Of  course  Chicago  had  not  yet  begun,  for  in 
1820  the  census  only  showed  9,638,191. 

The  keeper  of  the  happy  family  was  re-elected  in 
1820.  There  was  only  one  vote  against  him,  —  a  lit- 
tle mistake  or  eccentricity  not  worth  inquiring  into. 
There  was  a  little  shimmering  over  the  calm  surface 
for  two  years,  caused  by  the  application  of  Missouri  to 
bring  slaves  with  her  into  the  family.  Of  course  Mr* 
Clay  produced  a  compromise  as  a  settlement  in  1820. 
Missouri  was  allowed  slaves;  but  thereafter  slavery 
was  banned  from  all  territory  north  of  36°  30'.  The 
bridle  looked  strong  when  there  was  no  horse.  -  "When 
the  black  charger  was  brought  out  and  the  bridle  put 
on,  it  was  found,  however,  that  he  leaped  unchecked 
over  the  line. 

In  1819  Florida  was  boughtfrom  Spain  for  $5,000,000, 
and  delivered  to  us  in  1821.  We  got  with  it  more 
than  our  bargain,  —  a  lot  of  very  sharp  Indian  toma- 
hawks. To  blunt  them  soon  cost  $  30,000,000.  The 
Dry  Tortugas  were  thrown  in.  So  were  the  Florida 
Keys.  So  were  the  alligators.  Fortunately  the  night 
dews  were  left  to  prevent  the  peninsula  from  cracking 
off.  Our  Union  is  for  better  or  worse.  We  took 
Florida  in  the  era  of  good-will ;  we  keep  it  for  nothing. 
Among  the  crockery  in  the  family  cupboard  an 
occasional  cup  comes  with  a  cracked  handle  or  broken 
edge.  Having  little  to  do  at  home,  our  statesmen 
turned  their  attention  to  Venezuela  and  New  Granada, 


398    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

then  fighting  under  Bolivar  for  their  independence  of 
Spain.  Bravely  they  spoke  up  for  the  under  cur  in 
the  fight ;  but  more  courageous  still,  the  President,  in 
his  annual  message  for  1823,  declared,  as  a  principle, 
in  spite  of  the  crowds  of  colonists  to  our  own  ports, 
that  no  European  nation  had  any  right  to  colonize 
any  territory  on  the  Western  continent,  —  a  Monroe 
doctrine  which,  like  the  laws,  is  very  loud-spoken  in 
peace,  but  very  silent  in  war. 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

TROUBLES  BUBBLE;  OR,  THE  SORROWS   OF   JOHN 
QUINCY  ADAMS. 

1826-1829. 

Parallel  between  Sidney  Smith's  Old  Razor  and  J.  Q.  Adams's  Term.  — 
How  several  Gentlemen,  touched  by  Age,  reached  in  Vain  after  Honors 
too  high.  —  Who  they  were  ;  and  what  Acid  Grapes  the  House  of 
Representatives  snatched  from  them.  —  Pamphleteering  and  Privateer- 
ing. —  An  Italian  Saying.  —  Description  of  a  Good  Statesman  spoiled 
in  the  Mould  of  a  Politician. — An  Illustrative  Anecdote.  —  Partisan 
Scales  weighing  Public  Interests.  —  The  Weights.  —  The  Depravity  of 
Political  Blunders.  —  History  vs.  Party  Judgments. 

SIDXEY  SMITH  once  said  "  that  he  was  like  an 
old  razor,  —  always  in  hot  water  or  in  a  scrape." 
The  term  of  the  second  Adams  had  similar  agreeable 
occupation.  The  water  was  very  hot  when  this  politi- 
cal blade  was  first  thrust  into  it.  Mr.  Monroe's  double 
term  was  so  quiet,  dozy,  and  apparently  so  long,  that 
several  gentlemen,  outside  of  Virginia,  felt  that  they 
were  growing  old,  and  might,  unless  they  improved 
the  chance,  easily  slip  out  of  it.  Besides  Mr.  Adams, 
there  were,  as  candidates,  General  Andrew  Jackson  of 
Tennessee,  William  H.  Crawford  of  Georgia,  and  Henry 
Clay  of  Kentucky ;  among  whom  General  Jackson  re- 
ceived the  highest  popular  vote,  and  Mr.  Adams  the 
next.  In  the  House  of  Representatives,  the  ballot 
taken  by  States  gave  Mr.  Adams  13,  General  Jackson 


THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

7,  and  Mr.  Crawford  4  votes.  Each  of  these  was  a 
dragon's  tooth,  which  was  carefully  sown,  and  pro- 
duced rank  growths  of  sulphur-colored  partisans,  whose 
drifting  seeds  grew  into  poisonous  crops  all  along  the 
public  roads.  Pamphleteering  became  privateering  on 
private  reputation.  Industrious  falsehoods  supplied 
for  many  years  the  warp  of  history. 

"  Si  non  &  vero  &  ben  trovato  "  was  the  maxim  of  in- 
genious and  disingenuous  fraud. 

Nursed  and  reared  a  statesman,  Mr.  Adams  made  a 
very  poor  politician.  He  could  no  more  run  his  ever- 
cooling  intellect  and  scholarly  attainments  into  the 
curious  moulds  of  party  than  he  could  make  Q  fit  the 
place  of  A.  Worse  far,  he  had  such  a  small  organ  for 
a  heart,  that  it  sent  no  blood  to  his  cold  fingers  for 
hand-shaking.  He  had  too  much  conscience  to  be 
popular  with  office-beggars,  and  not  manners  enough 
to  go  around  in  the  country  at  large.  He  never  stirred 
out  of  Washington,  that  he  did  not  tread  on  some  one's 
foot. 

"  James,"  said  a  father  to  his  malapropos  son,  "  you 
have  only  two  faults ;  one  is,  that  you  are  good  for 
nothing  before  breakfast,  and  the  other  is,  that  you  are 
not  a,  whit  better  after  breakfast."  So  said  of  the  un- 
partisan  President  his  political  fathers,  the  heads  of 
committees  ;  and  their  opinion  outbalanced  in  the  scale 
the  petty  weights  of  general  prosperity,  peace  at  home 
and  abroad,  a  careful,  scrupulous  economy,  that  kept 
the  entire  expenses  of  the  government  below  thirteen 
millions  annually,  and  a  steady  payment  on  the  na- 
tional debt  of  seven  and  a  half  millions  a  year.  The 
friendly  blunder  of  appointing  Mr.  Clay  Secretary  of 


TROUBLES   BUBBLE.  401 

State  was  a  political  crime  ;  the  retention  of  those  al- 
ready in  office,  political  unrighteousness  ;  the  refusal 
to  appoint  clamorous  partisans  to  paying  places,  ex- 
aggerated political  depravity.  History  at  last  inscribes 
over  the  gateway  of  his  term  "  Arabia  Felix,"  over  the 
place  where  popular  misconception  and  partisan  dis- 
appointment had  hastily  chiselled  "  Arabia  Petrea." 


CHAPTEE   X. 

THE   AGE  OF   HICKORY;    OR,  JACKSON'S   EPOCH. 
1829-1837. 

Military  Men,  domesticated  to  Civil  Life,  like  tamed  Animals.  —  General 
Jackson's  Camp  Traits  in  the  White  Den  at  Washington.  —  His  Prehen- 
sile Habits  claw  out  the  Eyes  of  several  Measures.  —  How  he  foraged 
on  his  Political  Enemies,  and  turned  his  Troops  of  Friends  into  the 
Public  Pastures.  —  Lord  Palmerston's  Remark  upon  Gladstone  ;  and 
its  American  Application. —  An  Insurrection  among  the  Household 
Cabinet  Troops.  —  How  the  vigorous  Hickory  Club,  wielded  chival- 
rously for  a  Woman,  quelled  it.  —  The  President  moves  on  the  Bank 
and  captures  all  its  Fortified  Points.  —  Chicago  starts  in  1830.  —  Why 
it  did  not  overtake  and  annex  the  United  States.  —  South  Carolina 
threatens  Nullification,  and  is  threatened.  —  Mr.  Calhoun  violently 
promised  an  elevated  Position  between  two  Posts.  Mr.  Clay's  Com- 
promise. —  Horace  Greeley  starts  the  First  Daily  Paper.  — Its  untimely 
End  bewailed  in  Verse.  —  Black  Hawk  caged  and  shown  around.  — 
Georgia,  the  Cherokees  and  the  Supreme  Court.  —  Three  Celebrities 
gained  by  the  Seminole  War.  —  Of  Arkansas  and  its  Papal  Little 
Rock.  —  Prospects  for  the  Pope  when  flung  from  the  Tarpeian. — An 
Arkansas  Paul  preaching  in  the  American  Athens  and  Corinth.  — 
Old  Hickory  and  the  Nuts  left  to  be  cracked. 

"XT ATURALISTS  tell  us  that  certain  animals,  do- 
.1  ^1  mesticated  from  a  wild  state,  retain  some  prime- 
val habits  so  tenaciously  as  never  to  shed  them ;  that 
these  animals,  for  example,  never  lie  down  on  their 
new  and  softer  beds  without  turning  around  and  beat- 
ing about  as  in  their  forest  lairs.  So  military  men, 
tamed  down  from  the  independence  of  camp  into  the 
regulated  routine  of  civil  life,  never  lose  their  unrest 


THE  AGE   OF   HICKORY.  403 

t 

in  attempting  to  adjust  themselves  to  their  new  condi- 
tion. General  Jackson  carried  the  defiant  bravery  of 
his  campaigns  against  the  Indians  into  the  white  den 
at  Washington.  He  disdained  to  cover  the  prehensile 
claws  of  new  measures  with  the  velvet  sheath  of  offi- 
cial prudence. 

Over  the  eyes'  of  schemes  or  institutions  which  he 
designed  to  scratch  out  he  cast  no  glamour. 

During  his  eight  years  of  civil  campaigning,  he 
stormed  several  forts  that  had  become  mossed  by  age 
through  preceding  administrations.  His  first  care  was 
to  live  off  the  enemy,  the  Adamites,  whose  Federal 
offices  he  took  as  forage  for  his  own  troops  of  friends ; 
an  example  from  the  military  code  which  every  suc- 
cessor, civil  or  uncivil,  has  unfortunately  hastened  to 
follow.  Lord  Palmerston  once  declared  "  that  Mr. 
Gladstone  had  not  a  command  of  language,  but  that 
language  commanded  him."  So  it  has  resulted  from 
this  tough,  hickory  precedent,  that  the  offices  now 
command  the  government. 

This  campaign  over,  his  next  exploit  was  to  quell  an 
insurrection  among  the  household  troops  led  by  Vice- 
President  Calhoun,  Mr.  Ingham,  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  Mr.  Branch,  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  and 
Mr.  Berrien,  Attorney-General.  These  officers  wero 
soon  cashiered  and  their  places  filled  by  Mr.  McLane, 
Mr.  Woodbury,  and  Mr.  Taney.  The  lily-white  arm 
of  a  lady,  whose  social  exclusion  from  the  Calhoun  set 
the  vigorous  old  warrior  resented,  moved  the  iron 
sinews  of  the  hickory  club  which  cleaned  out  the  Sec- 
retarys'  stables. 

The  General  next  moved  on  the  United  States  Bank, 


404    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

up  whose  slopes,  although  jagged  with  ores  and  hoary 
witli  legislative  fortifications,  he  rushed,  carrying  them 
at  all  points  with  a  coup  de  main. 

His  first  term,  however,  was  made  illustrious,  not  so 
much  by  these  destructions  as  by  the  first  appearance 
of  Chicago.  This  was  in  1830.  At  this  time,  fortu- 
nately, the  population  of  the  United  States  had  reached 
12,866,020,  and  were  thus  saved  from  being  overtaken 
and  immediately  annexed  to  that  rapid  and  rapidly 
pushing  place.  This  Northern  cosmical  event  attracted 
less  attention,  however,  because  the  public  mind  was 
at  last  and  about  this  time  fixed  upon  the  State  of  Mr. 
C.  C.  Pinckney,  which,  under  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Cal- 
houn,  threatened  to  exclude  the  Federal  hickory  gov- 
ernment from  its  plantation,  unless  the  Tariff  Act  was 
repealed. 

The  old  military  chief  issued  a  public  proclamation, 
asserting  his  determination  to  execute  the  laws  over 
South  Carolina,  and  private  threats  to  raise  the  main 
nullifier  to  a  lofty  post  under  the  government.  In- 
deed, he  promised  to  some  of  his  close  personal  friends, 
with  ejaculations  truly  Jacksonian,  to  put  him  between 
two  posts  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

This  was  the  first  sprouting  of  the  carefully  engraft- 
ed scion  of  slavery  upon  the  stock  of  State  rights. 

Again,  the  Kentucky  compromiser  was  ready  with 
a  harmonizing  remedy,  which  scaled  the  tariff  rates  for 
the  next  ten  years,  and  then  planed  them  all  down  to 
the  horizontal  level  of  twenty  per  cent.  South  Caro- 
lina, lying,  like  Achilles,  near  her  ships,  professed  to  be 
appeased.  Mr.  Calhoun  was  saved  his  hempen  eleva- 
tion. 


THE   AGE   OF   HICKORY.  405 

The  year  following,  1833,  Horace  Greeley  started  in 
New  York  "  The  Morning  Post,"  the  first  daily  paper 
ever  projected,  which  lived  only  three  weeks,  and  won- 
dered why  it  ever  lived  at  all ; 

"  Whose  all  of  life,  a  morning  ray, 
Blushed  into  dawn  then  passed  away." 

The  Sacs,  Foxes,  and  Winnebagoes,  with  tomahawks 
in  their  talons,  and  led  by  Black  Hawk,  swooped  in 
hovering  circles  around  the  white  chickens  of  Illinois ; 
but  were  brought  down  by  those  practised  marksmen, 
Generals  Scott  and  Atkinson.  The  old  Hawk  was  cap- 
tured, and  shown  through  the  United  States  in  his 
drooping  feathers.  In  Georgia,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
whites  were  the  aggressors,  seeking  to  push  the  Creeks 
and  Cherokees  from  their  coveted  possessions.  The 
Indians  fled  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
which  bade  Georgia  restore  the  poor  Naboths  to  their 
vineyards.  The  Ahab  sovereignty  of  that  State  resisted. 
The  President  refused  to  interfere.  The  nullification 
by  Georgia  of  a  decree  of  the  Supreme  Court,  restoring 
Indians  to  their  rights,  was,  in  the  eyes  of  the  old  In- 
dian fighter,  quite  a  different  matter  from  the  nullifi- 
cation by  Calhoun-led  South  Carolina  of  an  act  of 
Congress.  So  far  from  being  a  hair-splitter,  the  General 
could  not  even  see  whole  shocks,  if  the  poll  was  long, 
straight,  and  black.  In  1835  arose  another  Seminole 
war  in  Florida,  caused  by  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
government  to  remove  that  powerful  tribe,  under  a 
mock  treaty,  somewhere,  nowhere,  anywhere,  so  that 
it  was  west  of  the  Mississippi,  and  away  from  pres- 
ent cupidity.  On  the  public  debt,  now  dwarfed 
to  $291,089,  this  war  was  like  an  April  shower. 


406    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Florida  had  the  satisfaction,  for  the  third  time  in  six- 
teen years,  of  increasing  the  obligations  of  the  United 
States  for,  if  not  to,  her.  In  this  peninsular  cam- 
paign, we  obtained  three  celebrities  to  knob  the  flat 
surface  of  our  history,  —  Generals  Zachariah  Taylor, 
Jesup,  and  Gaines,  —  gains  compared  with  which 
the  loss  of  life  and  lucre  are  not  to  be  mentioned, 
except  to  stiffen  our  virtues  by  reproaching  their  sug- 
gestion. 

The  red  tribes  began  sensibly  to  experience  the  truth 
of  that  sad  tradition,  which  depicts  their  fate  under  the 
fkmre  of  a  spirited  bull,  Maiiitou,  which,  chased  from 

O  -L 

Cordillera  to  higher  peak,  across  plain  and  river,  ever 
westward,  stands  frequently  on  his  reluctant  retreat  at 
bay,  and  tosses  in  vain  from  his  frontlet  the  burning 
spears  whose  arrowy  flames  the  waters  of  the  Pacific 
only  can  quench. 

After  a  pause  of  sixteen  years,  Arkansas,  in  1836, 
strode,  bowie-knife  in  belt,  into  the  American  camp. 
"With  Little  Rock  for  its  capital,  it  bids  fair  for  the 
honor  of  sheltering  the  Pope  when  flung  off  from  the 
Tarpeian  at  Home.  Its  Saul-like  Legares,  having  been 
struck  down  by  miraculous  lights  since  1861,  we  shall 
probably  see,  becoming  zealous  Pauls,  mending  apos- 
tolic nets  on  the  Red  River,  and  preaching  to  the  ig- 
norant worshippers  of  unknown  gods,  in  the  Athens  of 
New  England  and  the  Corinth  of  New  York. 

At  threescore  and  ten,  Old  Hickory  was  trans- 
planted 'to  the  Hermitage.  The  merits  and  demerits 
of  his  administration,  his  political  principles  and  his 
personal  character,  constitute  still  the  Flanders  of 
American  parties,  over  which  much  hard  swearing  and 


THE   AGE   OF  HICKORY. 


407 


'( 


408    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

fighting  are  still  vigorously  carried  on.  The  rough- 
nutted  tree  has  been  well  shaken  by  friend  and  foe ; 
and  its  shaggy  fruit  we  leave  to  be  cracked,  at  family 
firesides,  to  season  insipid  pauses  and  to  flavor  uneffer- 
vescing  drowsiness. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  DUTCH  REIGN  OF  MARTIN  VAN  BUREN. 
1837-1841. 

A  New-Yorker  reaches  the  White  House,  and  has  Hard  Fare  there.  —  The 
Disadvantages  of  Competition.  —  A  Financial  Earthquake  breaks  large 
Amounts  of  Crockery.  —  How  much  made  a  Pile  in  1837.  —  The  Sub- 
Treasury.  —  The  Connection  between  long  Messages  and  Anarchy  in 
Finance.  —  Defalcations  in  Office.  —  Why  an  Old  Man's  House  is 
easily  robbed.  —  The  Phantom  of  Slavery.  —  Extraits  de  I'Afrique.  — 
Principles  and  Goods  sold  at  a  Profit.  —  A  Political  Trader  loses  his 
Capital,  and  gives  up  Business. 

AT  last  New  York  saw  one  of  her  citizens  reach 
the  "White  House.  Several  other  gentlemen, 
General  William  Henry  Harrison  of  Ohio,  Judge  Hugh 
L.  "White  of  Tennessee,  Daniel  Webster  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  Willie  P.  Mangum  of  North  Carolina,  were 
each  desirous  of  getting  to  this  favorite  inn  before  the 
others,  and  of  securing  exclusive  possession  of  it.  For 
four  years  the  Dutch  guest  had  a  very  hard  time  of  it. 
All  of  his  disappointed  competitors  watched  him,  as 
hounds  the  fox  in  his  hole,  ready  for  hot  pursuit  as 
soon  as  the  brush  showed  from  cover. 

A  financial  earthquake  broke  through  the  commer- 
cial crust  the  first  year  of  Mr.  Van  Buren's  term,  shat- 
tering most  of  the  crockery  in  the  great  cities,  and 
sputtering  red  menaces  of  ruin  through  almost  every 
18 


410     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

village  and  country  store.  In  New  York  alone  mer- 
chants toppled  down  amid  heaps  of  indebtedness  piled 
up  to  $  100,000,000,  —  a  respectable  pile  then,  now 
scarcely  worth  failing  for.  To  help  up  the  depart- 
ing credit,  the  President  recommended  the  sub-treasury 
scheme,  or  separate  chests  for  guarding  the  public 
moneys.  Of  course  this  expedient,  like  all  financial 
measures,  was  Dutch  to  the  people  generally,  who  be- 
came more  hopelessly  anarchical  by  the  interminably 
long  messages,  which  aggravated  their  want  of  ideas, 
and  somehow  fretfully  tangled  their  losing  tempers 
and  accounts. 

A  few  defalcations  among  public  officers  chafed  the 
popular  mind  to  an  illogical  but  natural  irritation. 
They  looked  upon  the  guard-houses  of  the  national 
moneys,  like  an  old  man's  residence,  insecure  from  his 
broken  gait  and  few  locks.  The  dark  phantom  of 
slavery  again  flitted  over  the  land,  its  dusky  shadow 
disturbing  the  vision  of  commercial  and  political  trad- 
ers. The  President  had,  in  his  boresome  in-augur-al, 
promised  to  his  Southern  supporters,  in  advance  of 
Congressional  action,  to  veto  any  bill  forbidding  slav- 
ery in  the  District  of  Columbia.  Petitions  against 
slavery  were  laid  under  the  table,  while  speeches  in 
its  favor  were  extremely  fashionable.  Mails  at  the 
South  were  opened  for  the  discovery  of  antislavery 
papers.  Politicians  perfumed  their  handkerchiefs  with 
extraits  de  VAfrique,  and  Northern  merchants  on  the 
seaboard  sold  to  the  South  their  principles  and  goods 
at  a  profit.  Still  the  great  trader  in  the  White  House 
kept  losing  his  capital.  The  new  war  with  the  Semi- 
noles  created  bad  debts.  A  proposition  for  a  stand- 


THE  DUTCH  REIGN  OF  MARTIN  VAN  BUREN.   411 

ing  army  mined  his  credit.  The  sub-treasury  scheme 
drained  specie  from  the  people  into  Federal  pools. 
To  Lindenwald  he  retired,  enriched  by  experience, 
but  with  his  political  ballot-paper  at  a  heavy  dis- 
count. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE   HABRISON-TYLER  TROUPE;   HOW  IT  PLAYED. 

1841-1845. 

General  Harrison's  Death  and  Life-insurance  Companies.  —  Whig  Bank- 
Bills  with  no  Tyler  Bodies  to  suit  them.  —  A  Good  Flint  which  re- 
quired a  first-rate  Gun,  Stock,  Breech,  and  Barrel,  to  suit  it.  —  Defini- 
tion of  Crabs,  etc.  —  The  Ashburton  Treaty.  —  The  Bankrupt  Act,  and 
whom  it  helped.  —  Misfortunes  and  Fortunes.  —  Mr.  Calhoun's  Texas 
Trick.  —  Diplomatic  Magic-Lanterns  exposed.  —  Roman-like  Garments 
with  Carthaginian  Spots.  —  Florida  our  Stocking  Heel ;  how  darned.  — 
Yarns  about  it.  —  Iron  Railings  as  State  Corsets.  —  How  the  Florida 
Keys  might  be  usefully  employed. 

AT  the  time  General  Harrison  was  called  from  the 
clerkship  of  the  County  Court  of  Hamilton 
County,  Ohio,  to  preside  at  the  People's  High  Assizes 
at  Washington,  he  lived  at  North  Bend,  a  very  differ- 
ent crook  from  that  of  his  predecessor.  He  was  sixty- 
eight  years  of  age,  and  in  feeble  health ;  yet  so  seldom 
do  people  die  in  desirable  offices,  that  any  life-insur- 
ance company  would  have  taken  his  life  in  a  policy 
at  the  lowest  premium. 

April  4,  1841,  however,  he  died.  Of  course  John 
Tyler,  the  Vice-President,  did  not.  To  the  subsequent 
regret  of  his  party  he  lived  on  —  a  plane  of  his  own, 
quite  apart  from  the  platform  upon  which  he  was 
placed  by  them,  and  bisected  by  a  Virginia  ecliptic  so 
oblique  that  it  rarely  touched  anything  or  anybody. 


THE  HARRISON-TYLER   TROUPE.  413 

Mr.  Clay  and  the  Whigs  tried  hard  and  long  to  shape 
a  bank  bill  to  his  amphibious  tastes ;  but  as  they  could 
not  find  a  body,  neck,  or  feet  to  suit  the  bill,  they  aban- 
doned the  study  of  natural  history  as  illustrated  by 
Mr.  Tyler.  A  bank  —  some  bank  —  he  seemed  desir- 
ous to  have ;  because  he  entertained  a  profound  con- 
viction that  a  bank  was  a  good  place  to  put  a  counter 
in.  Like  the  gentleman  who  possessed  a  first-rate 
flint,  and  wished  a  gunsmith  just  to  fit  a  good  breech, 
lock,  stock,  and  barrel  to  it,  the  acting  President  seemed 
anxious,  in  his  interviews  with  the  Congressional 
banksmiths,  to  have  them  fit  a  good  bank,  vaults, 
specie,  and  circulation,  to  his  admirable  counter. 

As  Cuvier  objected  to  the  definition  of  a  crab  given 
by  the  French  Academy,  namely,  "  that  it  was  a  small 
red  fish  which  walks  backwards,"  as  "  wanting  three 
things  to  make  it  correct :  first,  that  the  crab  was  not 
a  fish ;  second,  that  it  was  not  red ;  and  third,  that  it 
did  not  walk  backwards  "  :  so  the  leaders  of  the  party 
which  elected  him  found  equal  fault  with  Mr.  Tyler  as 
defining  in  his  own  person  the  name  of  Whig  on  three 
grounds :  first,  that  he  was  not  a  Whig  in  principle ; 
second,  nor  in  theory ;  third,  nor  in  practice. 

The  original  Cabinet  members  all  resigned,  except 
Mr.  Webster,  Secretary  of  State,  who  remained  to 
complete  in  July,  1842,  with  Lord  Ashburton,  a  treaty 
to  disentangle  our  northeastern  boundary  lines  and 
fish  lines  from  the  hard  knots  into  which  they  were 
running. 

A  Bankrupt  Act  was  thrown  out  by  Congress  in 
1841,  as  planks  for  traders  shipwrecked  by  the  tidal 
waves  which  followed  the  earthquake  of  1837;  but 


414    THE   COMIC   HISTORY  OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

the  principal  benefit  of  the  act  resulted  in  throwing 
the  stranded  fortunes  to  the  official  wreckers,  called 
assignees  in  bankruptcy,  who  secured  most  of  the 
stuff  cast  upon  the  shore.  In  two  years  this  barbarous 
wrecking  business  was  stopped  by  the  repeal  of  the 
law. 

)  The  principal  event  of  Mr.  Tyler's  term  was  the 
successful  trick,  shown  off  in  1845  to  the  American 
people,  by  Mr.  Calhoun,  the  new  Secretary  of  State, 
by  which  they  were  led  into  the  belief  that  Texas 
was  about  to  pass  under  an  English  protectorate. 
Stimulating  the  national  antipathies  and  cupidities,  he 
asked  Congress,  through  Mr.  Tyler,  to  secure  the  slave 
empire  on  the  Rio  Grande.  The  dark-lantern  exhibi- 
tion was  successful.  Congress  passed  alternate  reso- 
lutions, one  opening  negotiations  with  Mexico  for  the 
impracticable  cession  of  Texas,  the  other  providing  for 
its  practical  annexation.  These  little  State  deceits, 
covered  at  the  time  with  solemn  diplomatic  care, 
seem  very  pitiful  when  historically  exposed  in  their 
pasteboard  cheapness  and  tinselled  falsity.  The 
Roman-like  virtue  of  Mr.  Calhoun  was  picked  out 
with  Carthaginian  spots,  and  his  white  state  toga  shot 
with  colored  figures,  that  will  not  stand  the  sun. 
While  he  would  have  scorned  with  his  whole  nature 
any  individual  fraud  for  the  personal  gain  of  a  fortune, 
he  was,  like  so  many  other  politicians,  neither  above 
nor  below  being  more  than  sharp  at  a  party  bargain. 

The  day  before  Mr.  Tyler  went  out,  Florida  came 
into  the  Union.  She  is  the  heel  of  the  American 
stocking,  —  very  much  darned  and  always  in  need 
of  mending.  Yarns  orange-colored,  lemon-hued,  and 


THE  HARRISON-TYLER   TROUPE.  415 

palm-tinted  show  in  the  abundant  patching.  She 
has  been  thus  far  like  certain  small  country  places, 
which  scorn  fences  and  paint,  ready  to  borrow  money 
on  any  security  required,  and  are  always  foreclosed  at 
some  point  by  mortgages  which  hurt  no  one  in  the 
neighborhood.  Iron  railing  may  stimulate  her  pride 
and  corset  up  her  untidy  ways.  She  wears  the  keys 
at  her  girdle,  but  as  yet  has  forgotten  to  lock  up  her 
small  politicians  and  let  out  her  too  closely  kept 
products. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

FOLK'S  WHIRL;    OR,  THE  AMERICAN  POLKA. 
1845-1849. 

The  Floor  Committee  for  the  coming  Polka  described.  —  History  of  pre- 
vious Balls,  Country  Dances,  Virginia  Reels,  Quincy  Waltzes,  Irish 
Jigs,  South  Carolina  Shake-ups,  etc.  —  General  Taylor,  his  Advances 
and  Movements  at  Palo  Alto,  Resaca  de  la  Palma,  Monterey,  and 
Buena  Vista.  —  How  his  Partner,  the  Army,  was  taken  away.  —  Gen- 
eral Scott  among  the  Mustangs  at  Vera  Cruz,  Natural  Bridge,  Cha- 
pultepec,  Mexico,  etc.  —  Of  Wool,  Kearny,  Fremont,  and  Commodore 
Sloat.  —  What  New  Mexico  and  California  added  and  subtracted.  — 
The  Mustang  Liniment,  or  Treaty  of  Guadaloupe  Hidalgo.  —  How  the 
Path  for  the  Traditional  Sun  of  Civilization  Westward  was  cut  and 
paved.  —  Revolvers  judicially  quoted  and  applied.  —  Peculiar  Fruit 
adorning  the  Pendulous  Branches  of  Trees  in  New  Settlements.  — 
What  the  Little  Trick  of  the  Wizard  of  the  South  conjured  up.  — 
California  in  1848  and  now  contrasted.  —  David  Wilmot  raises  a  Ghost 
which  disturbs  several  Party  Feasts.  —  How  the  Polka  Party  broke 
up  ;  and  how  it  pleased  some  and  dissatisfied  others. 


committee  of  the  American  people,  in  No- 
JL     vember,    1844,   designated    new  floor-managers 
for  the  coming  season  of  four  years. 

With  Washington  and  John  Adams  the  nation  had 
had  the  old-fashioned,  respectable  country  dance  ;  the 
up  and  down,  square,  staid  figiires,  moving  through 
the  rhythmic  performances  and  retiring  with  marked 
dignity.  Then  came  the  Virginia  reel,  led  by  Jeffer- 
son, Madison,  and  Monroe,  with  the  same  partners 
throughout.  The  Quincy  waltz  followed,  ending  in 


FOLK'S   WHIRL.  417 

a  dishevelled  gallop,  when  the  heated  dancers  were 
led  off  to  chilling  ice-creams  and  whipped  syllabubs. 
This  was  succeeded  by  a  long  puzzling  Irish  jig,  under 
Jackson,  with  a  lively  and  frequent  change  of  part- 
ners and  a  passionate  mixture  of  feet,  heads,  and  ball- 
room dresses.  A  Dutch  hornpipe  led  a  select  party 
through  the  mazy  solemnities,  and  intermixed  fan- 
dango advances  and  retreats  which  characterized  the 
Van  Buren  schottishe.  Then  came  the  quick-footed 
cachuca,  performed  by  the  Harrison-Tyler  troupe, 
ending  in  a  South  Carolina  shake-up,  where  the 
darkies  were  the  principal  performers,  although  Cal- 
houned  white  men  promoted  the  dance  and  took  the 
profits  of  the  abundantly  patronized  bar.  The  floor 
was  now  cleared  for  the  polka,  an  extremely  spirited, 
gyrating  series  of  figures,  in  which  the  main  object 
was  to  balance,  by  rapid  dodges  and  double-shuffling 
whirls,  the  forcibly  acquired  colored  partner,  named 
Texas,  with  the  new  incoming  free  State  arrivals. 
The  sets  were  soon  formed.  President  Polk  was  of 
course  head  manager,  having  able  assistants  in  James 
Buchanan,  carrying  a  stately  variegated  black  and 
white  rose ;  Kobert  J.  Walker,  his  button-hole  adorned 
with  a  gold-colored  treasury  ribbon ;  William  L.  Marcy, 
resplendent  with  a  broad  crimson  war-sash  across  his 
broad  chest ;  George  Bancroft,  in  a  navy-blue  uniform, 
open  in  front  for  the  ready  exit  of  his  never-ceasing1 
orders ;  Cave  Johnson,  in  mail  attire ;  and  John  Y. 
Mason  with  his  narrow  cranium  transfigured  by  a 
straitened  cross-barred  attorney's  cap.  Southern  men, 
North  and  South,  stepped  eagerly  forward  to  join  in 
the  popular  dance. 

18*  AA 


418     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

General  Taylor,  a  modest  young  man  of  sixty-one, 
was  directed  by  the  managers  to  make  an  advance, 
with  a  party  clothed  in  the  United  States  military 
dress,  to  a  place  on  the  large  floor,  chalked  out  be- 
tween the  Neuces  and  Rio  Grande,  with  a  hint 
not  to  be  offensive  in  his  attitudes,  but  to  look  as 
disagreeable  as  he  chose  ;  and  that  if  anybody,  espe- 
cially the  blanketed  Mexicans,  who  insisted  on  having 
that  part  of  the  large  ball-room  exclusively  to  them- 
selves, should  give  him  any  chance,  however  small, 
to  fall  foul  of  them,  ball  or  no  ball.  When  one  is  de- 
sirous of  a  quarrel  he  is  not  usually,  especially  at  the 
Southwest,  long  kept  out  of  the  enjoyment.  In  April, 
1846,  General  Ampudia  and  General  Taylor  chanced 
to  touch  each  other,  and  off  went  the  chip  from  the 
American  shoulder.  Of  course  everybody  who  at 
the  North  sold  goods  to  the  South,  and  every  one  at 
the  South  who  possessed  a  colored  brother  in  fee- 
simple,  was  indignant  about  the  chip,  which  for  the 
time  conveniently  represented  American  honor. 

The  national  gorge  and  the  price  of  negroes  rose 
simultaneously,  Fifty  thousand  men  and  $10,000,000 
were  voted  by  Congress  to  iron  out  the  creases  made  in 
our  flag.  Of  course  the  young  man  of  sixty-one  soon  got 
into  the  adobe-colored  tumble  which  was  impatiently 
expected.  May  8,  1846,  with  the  aid  of  2,300  men,  he 
tripped  up  General  Arista  with  6,000  men,  at  Palo 
Alto,  and  the  next  day  fell  violently  against  him  at 
Resaca  de  la  Palma.  The  chopfallen  Mustangs,  pick- 
ing up  themselves  and  their  dirtier  blankets,  made  all 
haste  to  get  out  of  reach  of  the  rough-and-ready  treat- 
ment, and  sped  across  the  Eio  Grande  to  Monterey. 


FOLK'S   WHIRL.  419 

But  the  young  man,  excited  by  the  jerking  mazourka 
step  into  which  the  dance  now  broke,  grasped  his  part- 
ner, the  army,  around  the  waist,  and  flung  across  the 
opening  spaces  against  the  frightened  Mustangs  at 
Monterey.  It  was  a  hard  shock,  and,  of  course,  the 
sorry-visaged  Mexicans  were  'hurled  against  the  wall. 

The  floor  managers  for  some  reason  —  some  unchari- 
tably thought  from  envy  at  seeing  the  modest  young 
man  attracting  so  much  admiration  —  took  away  his 
partner,  and  sent  it  off  with  a  younger  man,  General 
Scott,  then  only  sixty,  to  another  part  of  the  room. 
The  figures  which  he  cut  with  his  set  of  twenty  thou- 
sand at  Vera  Cruz,  Cerro  Gordo,  National  Bridge, 
Churubusco,  Contreras,  Chapultepec,  and  city  of  Mexi- 
co, were  w^altzed  with  unflagging  energy. 

Meanwhile,  the  young  man  Taylor,  left  with  only 
4,759  raw  troops,  was  set  upon  in  February,  1847,  at 
Buena  Vista,  by  Santa  Anna  and  22,000  well-baked 
Mexicans.  The  South  American  Warwick  left  1,500 
men,  his  carriage,  travelling  equipage,  and  the  best 
part  of  himself — his  wooden  leg  — upon  the  field,  and 
with  the  fragments  escaped  southwards.  Almost  sim- 
ultaneously new-comers  were  seen  flying,  in  move- 
ments more  or  less  effective,  across  the  room,  —  Gen- 
eral Wool,  with  2,900  men,  at  San  Antonio ;  General 
Kearny,  at  Sante  Fe,  New  Mexico  ;  Captain  John  C. 
Fremont  and  Commodore  Sloat,  in  California ;  all  per- 
forming feats  which  brought  murmurs  of  applause 
even  from  trans-sea  critics. 

At  last  the  Mexicans  gave  out,  tired  and  glad  to  ap- 
ply to  their  wounds  that  Mustang  liniment,  the  treaty 
of  Guadaloupe  Hidalgo,  mixed  up  March  2,  1848. 


420     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

New  Mexico  and  California  were,  by  this  treaty, 
added,  with  eight  hundred  thousand  square  miles,  to 
our  westering  borders.  Henceforth  the  Eio  Grande 
babbled  a  bi-lingual  story  to  the  Saxon  Americans  on 
its  right,  and  the  mezzo-tinted,  mezzo-clad  Mexicans 

O        * 

on  its  left.  The  path  of  civilization,  whose  sun-lean- 
ing course  through  the  centuries,  from  Assyria  to 
America,  is  not  unfamiliar  to  Americans,  was  now  se- 
curely macadamized  by  Yankee  pavers  to  the  Pacific. 
The  Atlantic  slopes,  of  course,  were  easily  turned 
westward,  and  their  readily  manufactured  fruits  rolled 
down  into  the  Mississippi  basin,  and  over  its  heaping 
rim  beyond.  Revolvers  were  boxed  and  transported  in 
increased  quantities  to  the  Southwest,  to  supply  the 
judicial  demand ;  as  every  man  who  takes  up  govern- 
ment land  is  liable  to  sudden  litigations,  where  the 
trials  revolve  quickly,  and  cast  with  fatal  speed  one  of 
the  litigants.  The  wonderful  vegetation  of  this  newly 
opened  region,  gorgeous  in  tropical  luxuriance,  was  for 
a  few  years  made  more  remarkable  by  the  human  fruit- 
age, which  not  unfrequently  hung  suspended  with 
impressive  weight  from  the  pendulous  branches.  For- 
tunately these  productions  are  short-lived.  They  are 
but  the  morning  mists  that  hide  for  an  hour  the  mam- 
moth sierras  and  wide-armed  plains,  that  nurse  conti- 
nents and  centuries  to  manly  vigor. 

The  little  Calhoun  trick  had,  quite  unexpectedly  to 
the  wizard  of  the  South,  conjured  up,  —  not  a  few  paltry 
African  patches  grinning  with  ghastly  spectres,  chained 
in  the  linked  dance  of  death,  —  but  broad  empires  brim- 
ming soon  with  stalwart  men  and  women.  Calhoun 
proposes,  but  conscience  disposes. 


FOLK'S  WHIKL. 


421 


X 


422    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

The  yellow-fever  broke  out,  soon  after  the  treaty  of 
Guadaloupe  Hidalgo,  in  our  new  Californian  posses- 
sion, carrying  off  people,  not  thence,  but  thither.  By 
the  side  of  palace  hotels,  now  gleaming  along  golden 
bays ;  solid  warehouses,  through  whose  opened  doors 
show  the  well-stored  sheaves  of  Continental  harvests  ; 
settled  industries  that  spike  the  land  with  stacks,  vine- 
yards, mills,  and  spired  villages ;  palace  cars  which  in  a 
week  have  blazoned  their  luxurious  splendors  through 
solitudes  threaded  only  a  few  years  ago  by  the  danger- 
ous blazed  track ;  and  giant  steamers  wading  the  Pacific 
Sea,  and  carrying  to  the  Mongolian  empires  of  the 
Orient  a  staggering  back-load  of  American  products, 
—  by  the  side  of  these  actual  marvels,  even  a  score  of 
years  has  made  the  contrasted  early  life  of  the  gold 
adventurer,  gambling  in  revolver-furnished  tents,  dan- 
gerous night  brawls,  and  rude  visits  of  vigilance  com- 
mittees, a  theme  for  romance  and  its  twin  ally,  history. 
It  had  taken  nearly  three  centuries  since  Sir  Thomas 
Drake  proclaimed  California  the  ward  of  Elizabeth,  for 
the  North  American  boy  to  acquire  sufficient  courage 
to  touch  her  virgin  lips,  and  claim  her  in  happy  wed- 
lock. 

Our  New  Mexico  brought  immediate  and  national 
disturbance.  Slavery  there  was  considered  objection- 
able by  many ;  and  as  soon  as  Territories  were  proposed 
to  be  carved  out  of  those  wide  limits,  the  Wilmot  pro- 
viso, to  exclude  slavery  from  it,  arose  at  the  expected 
Calhoun  feast  like  Banquo's  ghost,  and,  disturbing  the 
revel,  followed  with  reproachful  look  almost  every 
American  statesman.  It  strode  into  the  Democratic 
Convention  at  Baltimore,  which  nominated  Lewis  Cass, 


FOLK'S  WHIRL.  423 

and  sat  alongside  of  the  shivering  president  and  secre- 
taries. It  stalked  into  the  Whig  assemblage  at  Phila- 
delphia, which  took  the  young  man  for  its  candidate, 
and  troubled  its  peace.  Finally,  it  flitted  to  Buffalo, 
and  made  its  appearance  at  a  mixed  gathering  which 
presented  Martin  Van  Buren,  —  now  the  political  friend 
of  the  ghost,  —  with  just  the  ghost's  chance  for  the 
Presidency. 

And  so  the  ball  and  polka  party  turned  out  very 
much  as  other  balls.  Those  who  had  expected  a  great 
deal  from  it  did  not  enjoy  it  much;  while  those  who 
had  no  hand  in  getting  it  up  had  a  good  time,  ate  the 
most  supper,  had  the  least  headache  the  next  morning, 
and  often  spoke  of  it  afterwards  with  pleasurable  rec- 
ollections. Among  the  former  were  Mr.  Calhoun, 
Mr.  Polk,  and  the  floor  committee ;  among  the  latter 
the  modest  young  man,  now  sixty-five  years  of  age, 
John  C.  Fremont,  several  people  who  did  not  part 
their  hair  in  the  middle,  and  a  growing  set  who  were 
friends  of  those  who  could  not  divide  their  crinkled 
hair  as  yet  either  way  or  any  way. 


CHAPTEE  XIV. 

THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  THE  AMERICAN  HALF- 
SHELL. 

The  contrasted  Beginning  and  End  of  the  Half-Century.  —  What  America 
brought  to  the  New-Year's  Day  of  1850  in  the  Raw,  and  what  for  the 
Grill  of  more  refined  Tastes.  —  Historical  Stews,  and  their  Foreign  and 
Domestic  Sauces.  —  What  they  were.  —  Attempts  at,  and  Failures  in, 
Insurrections  in  America.  —  Mechanical  Inventions  of  the  Half-Cen- 
tury ;  Steamboats,  Telegraphs,  Reapers,  Sewing-Machines,  etc. — Their 
Advantages.  —  Vestments  and  Investments.  —  Of  Ether.  —  How  Popu- 
lations drifted  to  Cities.  —  Chicago  bibulous  and  dropsical.  —  Public 
Men  and  their  Versatile  Principles.  —  Newspapers  and  their  unfulfilled 
Prophecies.  —  Plutocracy.  —  Fashions  and  their  Constancy  to  Change. 
—  The  Stormy  Petrels  of  Commercial  Disasters.  —  How  Owners  turn 
Wreckers.  —  Profits  out  of  Losses.  —  Of  Merchant  Salvors.  —  The 
Effects  of  Gold  Discoveries  in  California  on  Labor,  Ladies'  Heads 
and  Hearts.  —  Auriferous  Marriages.  —  The  Spite  of  Midas  against 
Children.  —  Ecclesiastical  Gardens  in  America. — The  new  Mormon 
Shrub  of  the  Genus  Polygamous.  —  Architectural  Improvements. — 
American  Houses  and  their  Sites. —  Farmsteads  ;  their  Better  Com- 
plexion. —  The  Crops  from  the  National  Farms,  the  Sea  and  Land, 
in  1850.  —  Of  American  Literature,  Science,  Natural  History,  The  Phi- 
losophies and  other  Branches  of  Knowledge,  and  their  Cultivators, 
through  the  Half- Century.  —  Summary  of  the  Bill  of  Fare  for  the 
Repast  on  the  Half-Shell. —  Its  Character  and  Critics. 

THE  nineteenth  century  began  in  America  com-  ' 
paratively  lean  and  unfattened,  with  but  sixteen 
States,  and  a  population  of  5,305,939.  When,  on  New 
Year's  day,  1850,  it  was  taken  up  from  its  native  beds, 
it  had  grown  to  thirty  States,  and  a  population  of 
23,191,876.  It  had  gathered  American  history  enough 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  AMERICAN  HALF-SHELL.   425 

to  be  served  up  in  every  style  to  its  hungry,  impa- 
tiently waiting  crowds  of  customers. 

There  was  still  plenty  of  it  in  the  raw ;  heaps  of 
materials  swimming  in  abundant  liquor ;  common  work 
at  rough,  resisting  nature,  bivalved  between  the  ordi- 
nary shells  of  laborious  days  and  unwaking,  sono- 
rous nights  ;  good  honest-minded  rough-handed  labor, 
swinging  the  axe  among  Western  settlements,  and 
pricking  gold,  silver,  and  lead  veins,  and  draining 
off  their  arterial  currents  into  Atlantic  bowls  ;  shaggy- 
jacketed  enterprise,  brave  in  work,  in  patience,  and 
cheerful  endurance,  quelling  the  rebellions  of  empty 
stomachs,  —  those  quickly  rising,  wrathful,  and  speedily 
armed  revolutionists, — and  subjecting  them  to  serve 
while  the  wheat  ripened,  and  to  wait  upon  a  nourish- 
ing hope ;  and  ploughmen  planting  broad  and  newly 
claimed  fields  with  tasselled  banners,  and  marching 
with  their  sheaved  battalions  to  take  growing  towns 
and  marts  of  business. 

"  A  mighty  maize,  but  not  without  a  plan." 

Others  there  were  drawing  fresh,  healthy  milk,  from 
the  breasts  of  buxom  mother  Earths  ;  pioneer,  shaggy- 
coated  energy,  East  as  well  as  West,  South  as  well  as 
North,  creating,  organizing,  and  crystallizing  around 
nuclei,  snatching  newly  created  words,  as  woman, 
from  the  ribs  of  necessities,  and  planting  them  amid 
the  needs  of  freshly  staked  Edens  ;  new-laid  towns, 
from  whose  hasty  nests  speculators  run  cackling ; 
mining  villages,  planted  at  sunset  out  of  hand,  watered 
by  hot  whiskeys,  stimulated  by  the  guano  of  revolvers, 
faro,  monte,  and  warmly  stirred  politics,  and  growing 


426     THE   COMIC  mSTORY  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

over  night  into  rough-timbered  climbers  up  and  up 
the  mountain-side,  to  look  over  into  the  canyon  be- 
yond ;  hastily  lit  oil  and  other  speculations,  around 
whose  flame  the  idle  moths  of  the  pulpit,  the  bar,  and 
the  counter  fly  and  singe  themselves  until  they  fall 
helpless  upon  the  table  of  others ;  struggling  schools, 
churches,  seminaries,  and  charities,  reaching  upwards  to 
the  sunlight,  growing  more  graceful  as  they  straighten 
away  from  their  earthy  roots,  but  still  raw ;  and  all 
the  many-visaged,  polysided  life  of  fresh  energy,  strug- 
gling for  the  mastery  over  the  down- wrestled  but  ever- 
rising  work  of  new  soils,  wants,  and  needs,  and  destined, 
in  spite  of  its  great,  rude,  sinewy  strength,  to  exhaust 
itself  upon  what  time,  patience,  and  long-applied  skill 
shall  shape  into  greater  symmetry  and  proportion,  and 
then  to  vanish  away  into  the  tomb  of  all  ex-workmen. 
There,  too,  were  heaped  up  and  ready  for  the  grill,  and 
for  tastes  more  refined,  capital,  massing  itself  into  cen- 
tripetal, compacting,  aggregated  wealth,  touching  large 
levers  that  swing  inflowing  products  from  port  to  port, 
across  wide-reaching  inland  spaces,  or  over  high  moun- 
tains ;  multiform  industries,  translating  and  exchang- 
ing, without  parallel,  the  growths  of  every  parallel ;  and 
associated  earnings  of  diligent  thrift,  extracting  the  best 
notions  from  hard,  quartz-headed  mountains.  There 
was  vivid  and  intelligent  joint  enterprise,  which  plunges 
beneath  the  waves,  and  places  the  sensitive  nerves  of 
thought  below  the  gambols  of  the  leviathan,  for  the 
especial  benefit  of  gamblers  in  bonds,  cotton,  gold,  and 
stocks ;  pries  open  the  shut  gates  of  science,  and  en- 
tices her  occult  learning  to  minister  to  the  enlarging 
demands  of  commerce,  agriculture,  manufactures,  and 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  AMERICAN  HALF-SHELL.  427 

trade  ;  sets  in  motion  the  steel  fingers  which  pick,  cull, 
card,  spin,  and  weave  the  cotton,  flax,  silk,  and  wool, 
whose  fabrics  clothe  us  through  all  seasons  ;  quickens 
the  spindles,  machines,  and  contrivances  —  busy  every- 
where —  which  create  our  necessaries  and  our  luxu- 
rious comforts ;  drags  our  fuel  from  the  tight  clutches 
of  the  mine ;  adulterates  our  food  and  drinks ;  sews 
up  our  vestments  and  sometimes  our  investments,  and 
supplies  our  dwellings  with  furniture,  our  stores  with 
goods,  our  fields  with  mowers,  reapers,  steam-ploughs, 
and  steani-iinpelling  implements,  and  our  grave-yards 
with  monuments,  hewn  by  machinery  and  chiselled  by 
the  nimble  fingers  of  patented  tools. 

Historical  stews,  too,  those  fifty  years  had,  of  course, 
produced  in  abundance ;  some  flavored  with  British, 
others  with  French  sauces.  Domestic  ones,  too,  had 
simmered  and  sputtered ;  but,  stirred  by  bayonet- 
shaped  spoons,  they  had  so  far  gone  off  in  smoke  as  to 
leave  only  an  insipid  taste  on  the  homely  palate  of  our 
peace-loving  household.  Of  these  were  the  Whiskey 
Insurrection  in  Pennsylvania,  and  Dorr's  Suffrage  Re- 
bellion in  Rhode  Island  in  1842,  made  of  very  poor 
materials,  and  smothered  with  a  rude  domestic  bread 
sauce,  which,  more  like  a  poultice  for  the  outside  than 
a  relishable  compound  for  the  inside,  soon  took  away 
the  vicious  appetite.  Indeed,  since  the  Great  Rebel- 
lion which  severed  the  long  threads  that  tied  us  to 
Great  Britain,  no  insurrections  have  ever  had  any  suc- 
cess in  America.  Sharp  newspaper  tfmeutes,  looking 
like  imminent  war,  yes ;  sectional  animosities  threat- 
ening, like  the  South  Carolina  chattering  of  1832,  to 
embroil  a  piece  of  us,  yes ;  State  grievances,  bubbling 


428  THE  COMIC  mSTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

up  with  heated  convention  resolves,  until  the  steam 
of  revolution  almost  arose  from  the  agitated  surface, 
yes,  and  often ;  and,  to  quote  an  example  since  1850, 
even  a  land-wasting  war  of  four  years,  reducing  large 
plantations  to  cinders,  and  leaving  in  funereal  gloom 
many  hopes  and  households,  —  even  this,  yes ;  but  a 
genuine,  earnest,  well-founded,  and  just  revolt,  rising 
from  wrongs  and  oppressions,  and  appealing  to  armed 
manly  protest,  and  resulting  in  deserved  success,  never, 
never ! 

Upon  the  half-shell  were  served  some  remarkable 
mechanical  inventions.  Water  raised  into  steam  was, 
in  1806,  applied  by  Fulton  to  propel  the  first  steam- 
boat over  water ;  an  application  never  contemplated  by 
the  Constitution,  but  which,  in  spite  of  the  many  pri- 
vate constitutions  suddenly  broken  up  by  it,  the  appall- 
ing increase  in  American  biographies,  and  the  wreck 
of  matter  thrown  upon  life-insurance  reserves,  must  be 
kindly  remembered  as  one  of  the  great  benefactions  of 
genius  to  humanity.  In  1832  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse 
discovered  the  mode  of  electro-magnetizing  thought, 
and  of  ticking  down  words  at  places  where  thoughts 
were  seldom  spontaneously  produced.  The  wiry  tele- 
graph is  daily  bringing  to  light  other  incidental  dis- 
coveries, which  show  how  great  benefits  sometimes 
pendulate  with  petty  remorses.  There  are  developed 
at  most  stations  a  class  of  people,  formerly  unknown, 
and  called  "operators,"  who  believe  that  small  acci- 
dents, in  places  unrewarded  by  the  notice  of  geogra- 
phers, are  national ;  that  the  births,  deaths,  or  marriages 
of  owners,  of  petroleum,  fast  horses,  or  other  rapid  stock, 
concern  all  readers  of  newspapers ;  that  the  time,  age, 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  AMERICAN  HALF-SHELL.  429 

and  pedigree  of  quadrupeds,  kept  for  jumping  long 
spaces  in  a  short  time,  and  the  weights  of  bipeds,  sent 
to  college  to  acquire  an  increase  of  their  intellectual 
strength,  but  who  punish  instead  an  ash  stick  some  four 
hours  a  day,  by  sweeping  with  it  some  frog-pond  in  the 
vicinity,  are  vital  statistics ;  and  that  the  election  of 
constables,  supervisors,  aldermen,  mayors,  and  members 
of  Congress  are  matters  which  every  intelligent  patriot, 
instead  of  banishing  from  all  recollection  as  speedily  as 
possible,  desires  to  have  forced  upon  his  journalistic 
readings.  If  Morse  started,  re-morse  has  often  fol- 
lowed after,  the  telegraph. 

In  1833,  one  Hussey,  from  Cincinnati,  improving 
upon  hints  glinting  out  through  agricultural  books  and 
poems  from  the  time  of  the  Eomans,  perfected  some- 
what a  mower  and  reaper,  which,  as  since  bettered  by 
Manny,  Ketchum,  and  McCormick,  has  made  such 
quick  work  with  our  meadows  and  grain-fields,  as  to 
break  up  all  the  delicious  reveries  into  which  pictu- 
resque men  in  them,  and  sentimentalists  over  books 
representing  them,  formerly  indulged.  Gone  is  the 
mower's  scythe,  now  nicked  into  the  quick-sliding  saw 
which  eats  in  a  day  through  acres  of  grass  and  golden- 
bloomed  wheat.  Gone,  Euth-lessly,  the  maidens  in 
broad  hats,  turning  with  a  fork  the  low-lying  clover, 
and  with  their  eyes  the  uncut  young  Timothy,  ever 
near  at  hand.  Vanished  from  American  harvest-fields 
the  whistling  grain-gatherers,  driven  from  sight  and 
pictorial  illustrations  by  a  single  hussy. 

During  the  half-century,  too,  was  set  up  that  useful 
American  music-box,  the  sewing-machine,  —  a  box  that 
now  sings  joyful  songs  of  shirts,  frills,  pantaloons,  and 


430    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

vests,  in  all  airs,  flights,  and  stories.  In  1846  the  ap- 
plication of  ether  to  lure  pain  into  insensibility  was 
first  discovered.  The  honor  j.s  contested  between  three 
Americans,  an  honor  large  enough  to  be  divided  up, 
and  a  third  given  to  each ;  but  as  each  naturally  covets 
the  exclusive  claim,  the  retort-like  monument  to  per- 
petuate the  discovery  must  be  inscribed,  to  ether. 

At  the  middle  of  the  century  populations  Ifad  begun 
to  gather  into  city  centres ;  515,547  in  Xew  York  ; 
340,045  in  Philadelphia;  169,054  in  Baltimore ;  136,881 
in  Boston;  116,375  in  New  Orleans;  115,436  in  Cin- 
cinnati ;  77,860  in  St.  Louis  ;  and  in  Brooklyn,  un- 
scared  by  German  invasions,  96,838.  Chicago,  writh  just 
a  score  of  years,  had  more  than  a  score  of  thousands ; 
but  its  frequent  doublings  since  have  run  up  so  many 
scores,  that  the  sum  leaps  the  bars  of  all  arithmetics, 
save  its  own.  Since  it  has  taken  to  drinking  out  of 
Lake  Michigan,  and  begun  to  draw  upon  the  Atlantic 
and  Liverpool,  our  calculations  have  become  so  drop- 
sical that  nothing  but  tapping  can  save  them. 

With  greater  wealth  had  come,  of  course,  into  Amer- 
ica greater  variety  of  aspirations,  tastes,  modes  of  dis- 
play, versatility  of  social  invention  and  experiment. 
Most  of  our  leading  public  men  had  lived  long  enough 
to  have  as  many  principles  as  they  could  number  de- 
cades, as  many  heads  as  the  hydra,  as  unlike  each 
other  as  in  cheap  weeklies,  and  yet  at  one  period  or 
another  a  faithful  likeness.  Good-natured  voters,  who 
could  recall  twenty  years  of  ballot  experience,  could 
remember  a  vote  given  for  and  against  almost  every 
Whig  and  Democratic  chief.  The  country,  had  survived 
the  predictions  of  its  downfall,  although,  at  intervals, 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  AMERICAN  HALF-SHELL.   431 

the  New  York  "Evening  Post"  for  forty-nine  years, 
the  "  National  Intelligencer "  for  thirty-seven,  the 
"  Boston  Post "  for  nineteen,  the  "  New  York  Herald  " 
for  fifteen,  and  the  New  York  "  Daily  Tribune  "  for 
nine  years,  had  in  startling  type  assured  its  readers, 
with  most  staccato  emphasis  and  adjectives,  of  its 
speedy  overthrow,  if  some  measure  which  it  repre- 
hended was  adopted,  or  unless  some  principle  which 
it  advocated  was  not  at  once  received  into  the  national 
creed. 

Plutocracy,  of  course,  also,  got  larger  Josses  and 
re-gilded  their  shrines  with  many  fantastic  patterns. 
Fashions  enlarged  and  contracted,  through  the  five 
decades,  with  every  east  wind  from  Paris ;  and  Amer- 
ican men,  women,  and  children  hastened  to  change  the 
boots,  hats,  and  vestments,  so  lovely  and  so  much 
admired  before  the  last  arrival,  with  the  same  alarm 
after  the  new  mode  was  out,  as  they  would  have 
doffed  a  garment  that  had  encased  a  cholera  patient. 

Fortunate  then  as  now  the  feather  or  flower  which 
formed  a  whole  tri-mestral  lodgement  among  the  na- 
tive, or  foreign  beds  of  hair,  that  are  so  beautifully 
upholstered  one  month  to  be  taken  down  and  ridi- 
culed the  next. 

The  stormy  petrels  of  disaster  had  frequently  ap- 
peared over  the  fluctuating  sea  of  our  commercial  life, 
covering  it  in  1837,  and  in  every  few  successive 
epochs  since,  with  its  screaming,  ill-omened,  harpy 
brood,  while  fleets  and  single  vessels  of  mercantile 
adventure  broke  up  and  lined  the  shore  with  their 
shattered  wrecks.  Then  as  now  the  owner  sometimes 

i^- 

turned  wrecker  of  his  own  cargo,  and  often  made  more 


432    THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  AMERICAN  HALF-SHELL.   433 

from  the  stranded  pieces  than  he  would  have  netted 
from  the  entire  cargo  had  it  arrived  safely  in  port ;  as 
the  expected  payment  of  its  purchase  price  would  then 
have  reduced  the  profits.  This  species  of  mercantile 
salvage,  by  which  the  proprietor  profits  by  his  losses, 
although  not  unknown  to  the  traders  of  Carthage,  has 
had  an  extension  in  modern  days,  that  threatens  to 
put  merchandizing  among  those  equivocal  ventures, 
which  puzzle  casuists  in  cases  of  conscience,  and  often 
defy  even  the  doctrine  of  chances  as  to  the  pay- 
ment. 

The  discovery,  in  1848,  of  gold  in  California  be- 
stowed upon  America  the  Midas-touch  it  had  fer- 
vently prayed  for.  Gold,  sweated  from  the  pores  of 
labor,  was  sprinkled  in  a  dusty  shower  upon  the  head 
of  beauty,  dropped  in  bars  upon  the  scales  of  the  ven- 
dors of  dry  goods  and  wet  goods,  filmed  the  eyes  of 
marriageable  girls  with  an  aureous  ophthalmia  which 
indisposed  them  to  see  any  desirable  wedding  unless  it 
was  golden,  and  so  veneered  the  duties  and  chairs  of 
railway  directors,  members  of  the  legislature  and  of 
Congress,  with  a  yellow  smearing,  that  nearly  all  bills, 
resolutions,  or  orders  have  refused  to  dip  into  or  drink 
from  any  stream  but  Pactolus.  Many  homes,  how- 
ever, through  that  half-century,  we  are  happy  to  say, 
unwatered  by  the  curse  of  that  thirsty  stream,  had 
taken  root  and  sent  up  solid  shafts  whose  numerous 
branches  bloomed  with  bountiful  clusters,  while  sweet- 
smelling  vines,  springing  alongside  the  family  trees 
from  the  roots  of  the  simple  love-knots,  spread  a  pro- 
tecting shade  over  many  a  family  roof-tree. 

Curiously  enough,  Midas  always  had  a  spite  against 
19  BB 


434    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

children,  which  grow  up  thickest  among  heaps  of  clam- 
shells  and  on  poor  side-hills. 

Into  our  flowering  ecclesiastial  garden,  planted  with 
every  known  variety,  and  exhibiting  large  and  vigor- 
ous growths,  Joseph  Smith  —  a  Vermont  simple  — 
introduced,  in  1827,  a  new  shrub.  It  bore  at  first  a 
double  Mormon  flower-looking  tip,  distributed  in  pretty 
equal  numbers  on  its  deep-green,  sucker-like  shoots; 
but  transplanted  first  to  Kauvoo,  Illinois,  in  1838,  and 
ten  years  later  to  the  alkaline  soil  of  Utah,  it  im- 
mediately bore  the  female  variety  in  alarming  dispro- 
portion. This  Salt  Lake  shrub  —  of  the  genus  polyga- 
mous —  has  become  by  cultivation  a  very  rank  weed, 
smelling  earthily  to  heaven.  Its  numerous  Young 
off-shoots  require  severe  cutting,  if  not  distinct  sub- 
soil treatment. 

Architecture  at  last  began  to  raise  its  tasteful  fronts, 
Elizabetlian,  Gothic,  Italian  cottage,  or  American 
composite,  set  in  trim  yards  or  on  smooth-shaven 
lawns,  netted  and  webbed  by  paths  and  walks.  On 
headlands,  fringed  with  sea-wave  ruffles ;  in  valleys 
gladdened  by  the  smiles  of  brooks  and  rallied  into  hap- 
py, healthy,  joyousness  by  the  outbursting  frolicsome 
hills  that  cannot  hold  in  their  peculiar  humors ;  on  the 
sloping  banks  of  many  rivers  seaward  running ;  and  on 
bossed  and  tufted  hillocks  where  the  j>ines,  spruces, ' 
and  larches  hang  aloft  through  all  seasons  their 
graceful  flags,  tasteful  residences  with  clustering  out- 
houses, sheltered  thrift,  corralled  the  domestic  wealth 
which  Midas  cannot  buy,  and  resounded  with  whoops 
that  brought  out  other  hoops  in  turn.  Farmsteads  had 
steadily  added  improvements,  amplified  their  breadths, 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  AMERICAN  HALF-SHELL.   435 

changed  their  white  coats  into  colors  more  harmonious, 
and  gathered  around  them  well-adjusted  farm  build- 
ings, and  in  their  neatly  fenced  yards  better  stock, 
quadrupedal,  bipedal,  feathered,  furred,  and  scaly. 

Under  improved  cultivation  our  two  national  farms 
—  the  sea  and  land  —  produced,  in  1850,  crops  that 
weighted  the  census  heavily.  The  former  showed 
1,360  new  American-built  vessels,  carrying  272,218 
tons ;  and  the  latter  bore  a  growth  that  year  of 
53,000,000  pounds  of  wool,  100,000,000  bushels  of 
wheat,  592,000,000  bushels  of  Indian  corn,  813,000,000 
pounds  of  cotton,  14,000,000  tons  of  hay,  grown  on 
farms  valued  at  $3,300,000,000,  upon  which  were 
used  implements  costing  $  153,000,000,  and  stocked 
with  live  animals  valued  at  $  544,000,000. 

But  while  American  hands  were  thus  busy  through 
the  half-century,  American  heads  were  not  idle  or 
unproductive.  Of  course  in  numbers  political  writ- 
ings led,  as  political  discussion  is  the  intellectual 
bread  and  butter  of  Americans.  Histories  of  many 
of  the  States  —  of  Connecticut,  by  Benjamin  Trum- 
bull ;  of  Pennsylvania,  by  Robert  Proud ;  of  New 
England,  by  Hannah  Adams;  "Annals  of  America," 
by  Dr.  Abiel  Holmes,  father  of  the  many-tongued, 
myriad-sided  Oliver  Wendell,  and  others  — gathered  up 
the  variously  colored  skeins  of  the  busy-fingered  past ; 
while  lives  of  eminent  statesmen —  Patrick  Henry's, 
by  the  accomplished  Wirt,  laus  laudato  viro  ;  of  Co- 
lumbus, by  Irving,  himself  a  discoverer  of  new 
worlds  in  America  ;  Washington's,  Franklin's,  Adams's, 
and  others,  by  Jared  Sparks ;  and  a  long  catalogue  of 
others  —  presented  pictures  of  rare  personal  daring, 


436    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

heroism,  patriotism,  learning,  and  worth,  set  in  choicely 
carved  and  polished  frames. 

Investigations  in,  and  sketches  of,  our  physical 
geography  and  of  the  natural  history  of  our  flora, 
fauna,  reptilia,  fishes,  and  birds,  by  Professor  Barton, 
Alexander  Wilson,  John  J.  Audubon,  Samuel  L.  Mitch- 
ell, Timothy  Flint,  and  kindred  minds,  brought  out, 
in  lights  as  brilliant  as  our  October  sunsets,  our  wide 
surfaces,  and  the  objects  crawling,  flitting,  or  flying 
upon  and  over  them.  In  sacred  literature,  theology, 
and  polemics,  Samuel  Miller,  Edward  Robinson,  Moses 
Stuart,  William  Ellery  Chauning,  Francis  WTayland, 
Nicholas  Murray,  the  Wares  (father  and  son),  Theodore 
Parker,  the  Alexanders,  George  Bush,  Edward  Beecher, 
and  a  marshalled  host  of  others,  upheld  by  logical 
force  and  with  learned  or  lively  dialectics  the  cher- 
ished views  of  their  various  sects.  Philosophy,  moral, 
mental,  metaphysical,  and  international,  spoke  golden- 
mouthed  and  eloquent  its  reasoned  rules,  principles, 
and  large,  grasping  deductions  through  Henry  James, 
Tayler  Lewis,  Ptalph  Waldo  Emerson,  Asa  Mahan, 
C.  S.  Henry,  L.  P.  Hickok,  Henry  Wheaton,  and  other 
diligent  minds ;  while  language  was  enriched  and 
fertilized  by  the  culturing  labors  of  Worcester,  Web- 
ster, Marsh,  Schoolcraft,  and  Duponceau. 

In  general  literature  our  hemisphere  sparkled  with 
fixed  stars,  like  Irving,  Prescott,  Story,  the  Everetts 
(Alexander  and  Edward),  Cooper,  Motley,  Ticknor, 
Bancroft,  Paulding,  Hawthorne,  Hillard^  Wilde,  Legare, 
and  uncounted  more,  which  lit  it  up  with  beautiful 
lights,  that  blent  their  flames  with  the  soft  poetic 
rays  of  Bryant,  Longfellow,  Halleck,  Whittier,  Saxe, 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ON  AMERICAN  HALF-SHELL.  437 

Lowell,  Poe,  Willis,  Hillhouse,  the  Careys,  the  David- 
son sisters,  —  scarcely  shown  ere  they  were  snatched 
away, 

"  Ostendent  terris  hunc  tantum  fata  neque  ultra 
Esse  sinent." 

Magazines  and  Eeviews,  although  first  appearing  in 
1745,  began  to  be  cultivated  about  1815  by  scholarly 
minds,  for  refined  readers.  "  The  North  American  Ee- 
view,"  "  The  American  Quarterly,"  "  Southern  Quar- 
terly," "  Tlie  Christian  Examiner,"  "  The  New  York  Re- 
view," "  The  Knickerbocker,"  and  eager  crowds  of  less 
note,  presented,  ere  the  half-shell  was  cast  aside,  such 
palatable  relishes  that  people  wondered  how  they  had 
ever  contrived  to  make  a  meal  without  them. 

On  the  whole,  looking  over  the  multiform  bill  of 
fare,  it  presented  a  healthy  and  not  discreditable  array. 
If  the  service  was  not  as  faultless  as  a  Sybarite  luxury 
of  taste  might  desire,  or  if  absent,  might  criticise,  it  was 
not  destitute  of  refinement,  and  while  consciously  sus- 
ceptible of  improvement,  was  as  consciously  guiltless  of 
many  of  the  sins  so  wittily  summarized  against  it  by 
Sidney  Smith.  There  was,  doubtless,  veal  too  young 
for  the  goggle-eyed  epicure,  who  had  haunted  the  Trois 
Freres  Provencaux,  in  Paris,  for  twoscores  of  years, 
and  the  dishonest  debaucheries  of  European  courts, 
with  vicious  diligence  ;  there  was  manifestly  beef  too 
much  done  for  the  dyspeptically  over-fed  stomach,  too 
critical  to  enjoy,  too  weak  to  digest,  anything  hearty  ; 
there  was  pork  here  and  there  in  the  place  of  pheas- 
ants' hearts  and  nightingales'  tongues ;  there  were 
plump  joints,  which  stood  where  foreign-fed  stomachs 
might  have  preferred  to  find  some  rare,  unpronounce- 


438     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

able  dish,  some  New-found-land  estray,  smothered  in 
the  sudden  tides  of  French  sauces,  and,  there  were,  also 
certain  culinary  anachronisms  that  had,  by  an  uncalcu- 
lating  liberality  —  so  abundant  in  America  —  piled 
themselves  thoughtlessly  on  the  great  half-shell,  —  a 
blue-pouted  oyster,  for  example,  in  a  month  destitute 
of  an  r  and  of  ar-oma,  or  sweetmeats  and  sweetbreads 
for  breakfast.  Still,  there  was  a  very  lavish  spread,  out 
of  which  a  reasonable  foreigner  or  an  un-Europeanized 
native  might  pick  a  good  deal,  before  he  churlishly 
finished  his  meal  on  vinegar,  or  pettishly  gave  himself 
up  to  sugared  water. 


CHAPTEE  XV. 

THE  BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE;    OR,  THE  TAYLOR   AND  FILL- 
MORE  WEBBING 

1849-1853. 

The  Young  Polka  Dancer  becomes  Floor  Manager.  —  The  large  Apples  of 
Discord  emptied  on  the  Floor  of  Congress. —  What  they  were  ;  and  the 
Pacific  Trees  from  which  they  foil.  —  Of  California,  New  Mexico,  and 
Deseret. —  General  Taylor's  Death,  and  Mr.  Fillmore's  suave  Man- 
ners and  smooth  Appeals.  —  Wendell  Phillips  and  J.  Davis.  —  Political 
Nurses  and  Anodynes.  —  Kossuth  and  his  Short  Catechism.  —  How 
it  did  not  take,  and  how  he  did.  —  A  large  Piece  of  Japanned  Ware.  — 
Deaths  of  Clay  and  Webster.  —  The  Autumn  Glory  which  they  shed 
on  a  Stormy  Season. 

THE  young  man  who,  in  Texas  and  Mexico,  had 
got  through  the  polka  to  the  delight  of  the  spec- 
tators, and  the  discontent  of  the  floor  committee,  be- 
came  himself  the   general   manager   for   the   coming 
season ;  Millard  Fillmore  being  first  assistant. 

Already,  however,  the  apple  of  discord,  or  rather  a 
whole  barrelful  of  very  red-faced  Spitzenbergs,  mixed 
with  meal-colored  russets,  had  been  emptied  into  the 
Union,  and  rolled  over  the  floor  of  Congress.  The 
acquisitions,  gained  from  Mexico  by  arms  and  the 
treaty  of  1848,  including  the  new  gold  weights  handed 
up  by  California,  disturbed  the  adjustments  of  Mr. 
Calhoun's  patent  balances,  which  only  worked  well 
when  a  colored  State  was  put  on  one  side  at  the  same 
moment  that  an  uncolored  one  was  put  upon  the  other, 


440     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

—  an  operation  about  as  difficult  and  just  as  natural, 
as  that  which  regulates  the  number  of  children  in  a 
family  to  the  number  of  bushels  of  wheat  grown  in 
any  season,  or  to  the  number  of  windy  days  in  the  year. 
In  1850,  three  Territories  pressed  for  admission  as 
States,  each  carrying  some  of  the  fatal  apples ;  Cali- 
fornia, with  a  Constitution  excluding  slavery;  New 
Mexico,  formed  out  of  Texas,  but  disputing  with  her  a 
boundary  line ;  and  Utah,  then  called  Deseret,  taking 
in  all  the  women  which  could  be  drawn  thither,  and, 
by  the  aid  of  its  dry  air,  absorbing  them  into  the 
Smith  and  Young  families.  Texas  herself,  admitted 
into  the  Union  in  December,  1847,  always  swaggering 
with  a  rapier  in  her  belt  and  a  patch  over  her  eye, 
bullied  New  Mexico  lustily  on  one  side,  so  as  to  make 
lustier  claims  upon  the  United  States  on  the  other,  — 
a  cock-eyed  way  of  shooting  that  made  one  barrel  with 
two  diverging  eyes  over  the  sight  do  the  work  of  a 
double-shooter.  Petitions  from  the  North  for  the 
abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and 
from  the  South  for  a  more  stringent  fugitive-slave 
act,  rolled  very  large  Spitzenbergs  and  russets  on  the 
floor  of  Congress. 

Looking  from  the  legislative  galleries  upon  the 
newly  arrived  heap,  a  Western  stroller  might  have 
asked  of  his  comrade,  as  the  freshly  landed  Irishman 
demanded  of  his  countrymen,  at  his  first  sight  of  a 
tortoise  walking  about,  "  Be  these  live  snuff-boxes 
common  in  these  America  ;  be  they  or  be  they  ? "  and 
might  have  received  a  like  answer,  "  Be  asy,  and  look 
on  I  tell  ye,  for  I  dunno  's  they  be,  and  I  dunno  as 
they  be." 


THE  BEGINNING   OF   STRIFE.  441 

Suddenly,  however,  Mr.  Clay's  old  established  omni- 
bus, belonging  to  the  compromise  line,  —  which  gener- 
ally took  up  all  the  passengers,  rejoicing  at  their  good 
luck,  although  apt  to  set  them  down  very  discontented 
at  the  end  of  the  way,  —  drove  in  to  carry  off  in  one 
load  all  of  these  fretting,  complaining  subjects. 

Just  at  this  time,  July  9, 1850,  the  large-hearted  but 
short-headed  President  died,  and  the  polite  and  urbane 
Fillmore, 

"  Washing  his  hands  with  invisible  soap, 
In  imperceptible  water," 

stepped  out  on  the  balcony,  and,  bowing  suavely  to- 
wards the  driver  and  the  quarrelsome  load,  begged  Mr. 
Webster,  Mr.  Corwin,  Mr.  Crittenden,  and  other  by- 
standers, to  be  good  enough  to  assist  in  getting  the 
carry-all  and  the  disagreeable  objects  that  kept  so  many 
people  awake  o'  nights,  out  of  Washington.  It  was 
not  until  September,  however,  before  the  tightly 
crammed  vehicle  was  started,  carrying  California  in  a 
State  suit,  unattended  by  a  colored  servant,  New  Mex- 
ico, and  Utah  as  Territorial  passengers,  with  the  liberty 
of  having  bronzed  property  or  not  along  with  them, 
slavers  taken  out  of  the  District  of  Columbia  never 
to  return,  a  chest  containing  ten  million  dollars  for  the 
State  witli  a  patch  on  its  eye,  and  messengers  to  the 
Northern  free  States,  informing  them  that  hereafter 
they  were  to  break  up  all  underground  railroads,  and 
to  send  stray  Southern  baggage,  without  its  owners, 
back  whence  it  had  departed. 

Of  course  everybody  was  dissatisfied,  except  Wendell 
Phillips,  J.  Davis;  and  their  following,  —  the  ascend- 
entalists  and  descendentalists^  —  who,  sincere  devotees 
19* 


442     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

for  equality  and  inequality,  found  a  novel  pleasure  in 
having  new  stand-points,  from  which  they  could  each 
look  up  to  or  down  upon,  a  grievance  large  enough  for 
thought,  speech,  and  action. 

The  political  nurses,  of  course,  thought  that  the  pare- 
goric had  forever  quieted  the  crying  evils  ;  but  wiser 
people  foresaw  that  these  attempts  to  get  remedies  for 
wide-awake  consciences  and  interests  out  of  a  Con- 
gress-water bottle  were  just  as  idle  as  the  conjurer's 
trick  to  obtain  whiskey,  wine  cordial,  brandy,  and  milk- 
punch  from  the  same  nozzle. 

In  1851  Louis  Kossuth,  brought  over  from  Turkey, 
whither  he  had  escaped  from  Hungary  in  a  national 
ship,  put  forth,  immediately  on  his  arrival  here,  a  very 
short  catechism,  which  comprised  a  single  question 
and  answer. 

"  Q.   What  is  the  chief  end  of  Americans  ? 

"A.   To  fight  Austria  evermore." 

After  spending  most  eloquent  commentaries  upon  this 
brief  compendium  of  duty,  in  which  he  braided  newly 
spun  English  words  and  upbraided  American  indiffer- 
ence, he  abandoned  the  missionary  field,  leaving  a  large 
Kossuth  party,  but  a  very  small  body  of  proselytes  to 
Kossuth's  gospel. 

In  1852  we  obtained  an  immensely  large  piece  of 
japanned  ware,  —  a  Japanese  treaty  bargained  for  by 
Commodore  Perry,  —  a  piece  which  seems  to  grow 
larger  the  longer  we  look  at  it. 

The  death  of  Mr.  Clay  in  June,  1852,  and  of  Mr. 
"Webster  in  October  following,  left,  like  the  touch  of 
frost  in  autumn,  a  dying  glory  to  the  troubled  and 
storm-swept  season  which  had  just  passed  over  Amer- 
ica. 


CHAPTEE    XVI. 

THE  UNION  PIERCED  ;   OR,  PIERCE'S  TURN. 

1853-1857. 

Reference,  by  Believers  in  the  Transmigration  of  Souls,  to  Mr.  Pierce  for 
its  Proof.  —  His  real  and  apparent  Age.  —  The  Slave  Colossal  Figure 
bestrides  the  Presidential  Harbor.  —  How  the  New  President  rode  in 
between  its  Legs,  and  cast  out  a  curious  Anchor.  —  An  Antediluvian 
Cabinet.  —  Still  Times  expected.  —  Sudden  Freshet.  —  Douglas  breaks 
the  Missouri  Dike.  —  Bitter  Waters  over  the  Land.  —  Alarm  among  the 
Elderly  Gentlemen,  and  how  quieted  by  J.  Davis.  —  Alarm  North  and 
South  not  quieted.  —  The  African  Outlook  towards  the  North  Pole.  — 
The  Power  of  Douglas  illustrated  from  his  Scotch  Namesake  and 
Proverb.  —  What  Warriors  rushed  to  our  Flanders.  —  The  Blow  on 
the  Head  of  Sumner  and  Slavery  from  Brooks's  Cane.  —  The  Dred 
Scott  Essays.  —  American  Africanization.  —  An  Exploring  Party  in 
the  Interior.  —  Discovery  of  an  Extinct  Race,  and  of  Fremont.  —  Un- 
diked  Waters  not  strong  enough  to  float  Douglas  into  a  Nomination.  — 
Buchanan  in  the  Dock.  —  The  Know-Nothings  make  a  neat  little  Pres- 
ent to  a  Polite  Gentleman. 

BELIEVERS  in  the  doctrine  of  transmigration  of 
souls  point  to  Franklin  Pierce  for  its  triumphant 
demonstration.  Although  by  ordinary  reckoning  but 
forty-nine  years  old  when,  in  March,  1853,  he  came 
out  of  New  Hampshire  to  be  President  of  the  United 
States,  he  must  have  lived  —  so  they  assert  —  some- 
where through  several  previous  existences  and  brought 
along  with  him  the  last  time  the  cherished  notions  of 
the  first.  Certainly  he  was  as  much  of  an  anachro- 
nism as  a  two-handled  plough,  dragged  by  a  yoke  of 


444    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

oxen,  contrasted  with  a  steam  one  driving  its  h,»£ 
shares  through  dissolving  acres,  an  undecked  Roman 
trireme  rowed  against  an  iron-breasted  monitor  armed 
with  the  heaviest  modern  gun,  or  an  old-fashioned 
scythe  in  comparison  with  a  mower. 

His  ideas  of  government  were  scant  for  a  good-sized 
town,  and  of  slavery  so  patriarchal,  that  a  lied  Eiver 
planter  might  have  taken  several  lessons  from  him 
with  great  profit. 

Slavery  at  that  time,  like  the  colossal  statue  of 
Apollo  at  Rhodes,  stood  with  its  two  feet  widely 
apart.  Its  right  was  planted  in  the  commercial  cities 
of  the  North,  covered  with  a  huge  stocking  of  North- 
ern manufacture ;  its  left,  spread  out  like  Sambo's,  all 
over  the  Gulf  States,  was  carefully  enwrapped  with 
raw  cotton.  Between  its  wide-spread  legs  Mr.  Pierce, 
like  an  ancient  mariner,  sailed  into  the  harbor,  and 
cast  out  an  anchor,  forged  at  Baltimore,  or  it  may  be 
at  Nineveh,  with  an  inscription  on  its  best  fluke,  "  No 
agitation  about  slavery."  It  might  as  well  have  been 
inscribed,  "  No  more  thinking." 

He  asked  several  elderly  gentlemen  to  help  him 
have  a  good  quiet  time  :  William  L.  Marcy,  with  the 
portfolio  of  State ;  James  Guthrie,  incubating  the  snug 
little  Treasury  nest ;  Jefferson  Davis,  with  the  appropri- 
ate red-lettered  War  rifle  ;  Caleb  Gushing,  holding  the 
Attorney-General's  fool's-cap  brief;  Eobert  McClelland, 
bringing  an  oaken  inlaid  table  for  the  Interior;  and 
James  Campbell,  an  old-fashioned  letter- weigher. 

They  expected  to  have  a  good  antediluvian  time  of 
it,  as  Mr.  Clay's  compromise  carry-all  had  transported 
into  the  wilderness  the  bad-looking  lot  which  had 


THE   UNION  PIERCED.  445 

broken  into  the  peace  of  the  gentlemanly  Fillmore. 
Mr.  Buchanan  was  sent  away  to  England,  and  some 
restless  engineers  somewhere  toward  the  Pacific,  —  a 
'  pleasant-sounding  place  far  away  out  West,  —  to  get 
up  a  report  on  a  railroad  which  might  amuse  the 
young  people  to  read  in  the  long  winter  evenings. 

Suddenly,  however,  all  of  these  serene  prospects 
were  clouded.  The  great  shield,  constructed  by  the 
Democratic  Convention  to  hang  in  front  of  the  venera- 
ble President,  and  to  prevent  agitation,  was  found, 
in  spite  of  its  solid-looking  face,  to  be  pierced  on  the 
inside  by  impertinent  little  teredos,  whose  ceaseless 
boring  had  already  begun  to  weaken  its  resisting 
power.  Other  mariners  wished  to  sail  in  between 
the  cotton-covered  feet.  And  in  January,  1854,  one 
of  these  Presidential  seamen,  from  Illinois,  named 
Stephen  A.  Douglas,  leaped  ashore  on  a  bluff  point 
just  outside  the  harbor,  exclaiming  with  great  lung 
power  that  "every  Territory  had  a  right  to  do  as  it 
chose  about  slavery."  This  declaration  from  a  Demo- 
cratic friend  startled  the  elderly  party  not  a  little ;  but 
when  that  friend  rose  to  a  higher  pitch  and  shouted 
that  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  of  1821  which  kept 
slavery  from  all  territory  north  of  36°  30',  wras  uncon- 
stitutional, and  leaping  upon  the  solid  old  dike,  with 
bill  and  blow,  crashed  through  it,  letting  out  the 
bitter  waters  of  strife  to  flood  with  its  pent-up 
strength  all  the  wide  land,  the  antediluvian  party 
started  to  their  feet  in  great  alarm.  When,  however, 
Mr.  Davis  whispered  to  the  President  that  this  was 
only  undoing  a  modern  wrong,  and  restoring  ancient 
rights,  that  venerable  gentleman  folded  his  arms  and 
sat  down  contented. 


446     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Looking  out  upon  the  freshet,  the  bewildered  Afri- 
cans seemed  to  feel  that  their  only  refuge  was  the 
north  pole,  now  that  even  the  wilds  of  Kansas  and 
Nebraska  furnished  only  markets  for  their  higher- 
priced  bodies.  For  a  time  the  "  little  Douglas  "  appeared 
to  look  as  large  as  the  colossus  itself.  He  seemed  to 
be  as  powerful  in  American  politics  as  the  family  of 
his  Scottish  namesake,  which  after  intermarrying  eleven 
times  with  the  royal  stocks  of  England  and  Scotland, 
became  so  resistless  as  to  start  the  proverb,  "  No  man 
may  touch  a  Douglas,  nor  a  Douglas  man,  for  if  he 
do  he  is  sure  to  come  by  the  waur  "  (worse). 

But  the  broad-wasting  flood,  poured  out  from  the 
cleft  dike,  soon  sent  an  alarm  throughout  the  North, 
and  inspired  terror  among  even  the  conscientious  of 
the  South.  To  protect  slavery — however  repugnant 
—  where  it  existed  in  the  old  States  was  felt  very 
universally  in  the  North  to  be  a  duty  imposed  by  law, 
equity,  and  good  neighborhood ;  but  to  batter  down  a 
barrier  which  had  been  erected  by  both  North  and 
South,  every  timber  in  which  had  been  paid  for  by 
a  price  given  and  accepted,  shook  nearly  all  con- 
sciences into  sad  action.  Wherever  the  waters  swept 
there  wrere  land-slides  from  Democratic  grounds.  The 
shield  against  agitation  now  crumbled  like  the  stricken 
dike. 

Kansas  became  another  Flanders,  where  pikes,  knives, 
find  pistols  were  carried  at  the  plough,  into  private 
houses,  through  villages,  and  into  conventions.  They 
were  ever-present  adjectives  to  the  noun  "  man."  As  in 
the  tropics,  whirlwinds  rush  in  towards  the  sun's  hot 
path,  so  towards  Kansas  from  Missouri  swept  advocates 


THE   UNION  PIERCED.  447 

of  slavery  with  bullets  for  the  settler  and  brands  for  his 
dwelling ;  from  New  England  long-haired  men  and 
short-haired  women,  ready  all,  some  anxious,  to  be 
offered  up  for  the  cause  of  freedom ;  from  the  Middle 
and  Western  States  sharp,  bayonet-faced,  earnest 
crusaders  to  rescue  the  threatened  sacred  ground  and 
to  throw  down  the  bronze  statues  and  statutes.  On 
the  path  of  these  hot  streams  backward  soon  lay  the 
scorched  and  burnt  relics  of  slavery  in  Kansas. 

To  slavery  in  the  United  States  a  moral  blow  was 
dealt  by  the  cane  of  Preston  S.  Brooks,  aimed  May  22, 
1856,  at  the  undefended  head  of  Senator  Sumner, 
which  had  a  few  days  before  opened  to  express  in 
emphatic  words  its  owner's  ideas  about  African  bar- 
barism in  America.  This  appropriate  practical  illus- 
tration of  the  argument  was  visible  everywhere,  and 
became  more  potent  than  any  books  from  or  in  behalf 
of  the  running  Brooks. 

The  cane  given  to  the  chivalrous  Carolinian  was  a 
poor  straw  which  did  not  show  the  way  the  winds 
blew. 

Still  another  blow  was  given  by  the  Dred  Scott 
opinion  of  a  majority  of  the  Supreme  Court,  which 
advised  the  people  in  choice  legal  terms  that  the  dike 
was  rightfully  cut ;  that  men  with  dark  skins  had  no 
rights  which  those  with  light  ones  need  pay  any  atten- 
tion to ;  and  that  uncolored  owners  might  take  ebony 
bipeds  along  with  their  quadrupeds  into  any  State  in 
any  part  of  the  Union  without  getting  them  out  of  an 
unpaid  state. 

This  Africanization  brought  out  a  new  party, — 
called  the  Eepublican,  —  for  keeping  the  Territories 


448     THE  COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

free.  Several  political  missionaries,  benevolently  in- 
clined towards  our  continent,  started  on  trips  into 
the  interior  of  America,  bent,  like  Dr.  Livingstone,  on 
exploring  regions  almost  surrendered,  like  Africa,  to 
the  descendants  of  Ham.  The  result  was  the  dis- 
covery of  a  race,  deemed  almost  extinct,  who  actually 
believed  that  colored  men  might  live  unowned,  and 
that  Territories,  where  slavery  did  not  exist,  would  get 
along  better  without  than  with  it. 

This  party  discovered  John  C.  Fremont,  and  set  him 
up  as  a  candidate.  Of  course  some  people  thought 
that  his  election  would  fracture  the  Union,  which,  they 
believed,  was  held  together  by  gum-bo. 

The  undiked  waters  would  not  float  Mr.  Douglas 
up  to  a  two-thirds  vote  for  the  Presidential  nomi- 
nation. Mr.  Buchanan,  buoyed  up  by  Southern  corks, 
reached  the  dock.  The  Know-Nothings  took  up  the 
polite  Fillmore,  and  gratified  him  with  a  present  of  th« 
neat  but  useless  eight  votes  of  Maryland. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

COTTON-SEEDS  SPROUT;  OR,  BUCHANAN'S  ADMINISTRATION. 

1857-1861. 

The  new  Missionary  Party  and  its  Growth.  —  Character  of  Mr.  Buchanan, 
and  his  Want  of  Same.  —  Description  of  curious  Drawers  in  his  Cab- 
inet. —  The  Uses  of  Isaac  Toucey.  —  The  Lecompton  Constitution,  and 
how  it  fell  together.  —  African  Order  of  the  Woolly  Fleece.  —  The 
Mormon  Magic-Lantern,  and  its  Shows.  —  What  Minnesota  brought 
into  the  Union ;  and  how  a  Long-fellow  raised  a  Fall.  —  The  War 
of  the  Illinois  Giants.  —  Abraham  Lincoln  described.  —  Self-made  Men ; 
their  Self-ishness  and  Unsymmetrical  Characters.  — -  Mr.  Lincoln's 
Growth  and  Character  illustrated.  —  Mr.  Douglas  delineated.  —  Presi- 
dential Bonfires,  Tar-Barrels,  and  Oratory.  —  A  Spectre  in  Virginia; 
his  Body  swinging,  his  Soul  marching  on.  —  A  live  Coal  on  the  South- 
ern Heart.  —  What  the  Democratic  Convention  was  asked  to  solve, 
and  what  it  re-solved.  Heads  I  win,  Tails  I  don't  lose.  —  Brecken- 
ridge  as  a  rare  Prize-Taker.  —  The  Missionary  Party  makes  a  Nomi- 
nation. —  New  Lights  and  Shadows.  —  An  original  Recipe  for  threat- 
ened Political  Apoplexy. —  A  sudden  Convention  in  South  Carolina. 
—  Its  mysterious  Origin  and  Dark  Ways.  —  A  Chaotic  Message.  —  Of 
different  Secession  Ordinances;  and  Want  of  Federal  Ordnance. — 
Political  Strikers  described.  —  General  Cnss  and  a  Broken  Heart.  — 
John  B.  Floyd  skedaddles,  chased  by  an  Indictment.  —  General  Ander- 
son. —  Fort  Sumter  breaks  the  Cabinet.  —  The  Confederate  Govern- 
ment and  Flag  made.  —  Their  Composition.  —  History  and  Character 
of  J.  Davis.  —  Where  Mr.  Buchanan  went  March  4,  1861. 

THE  votes  for   Fremont  were  1,341,264,  against 
1,838,169  for  James  Buchanan,  and  showed  how 
successful  the  missionaries  had  been,  and  the  rapid 
growth  of  the  tribe  recently  discovered  and  distinctly 
un-extiuct. 

CO 


450    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

Unlike  his  predecessor,  Mr.  Buchanan  was  not  so 
much  the  representative  of  a  past  age,  as  the  gristled 
type  of  unboned  nothings.  He  was  unorganized  chaos, 
without  any  personal  will  to  bring  it  into  useful  form, 
swinging  through  a  blind  menstruum  of  thin  party  air, 
lit  up  only  by  small  fire-flies,  that  left  a  deeper  dark- 
ness behind  their  quickly  quenched  and  shifting 
sparks.  His  Cabinet  was  of  course  a  bureau  with  no 
two  drawers  alike.  Its  principal  one,  Lewis  Cass,  was 
of  rosewood,  well  seasoned,  beautifully  grained  and 
polished.  The  money-drawer,  Mr.  Cobb,  was  of  bird's- 
eye  maple,  with  eyes  enough  in  it  to  see  all  ways. 
Lower  down  was  one  of  lignum  mice,  hard  and  tough, 
John  B.  Floyd,  with  a  knot-hole  in  the  rear  part  by 
which  access  was  had  to  the  drawer  above,  full  of  me- 
tallic com  shelled  off  the  Treasury  cob.  Below  this 
was  one  of  soft  pine,  full  of  treacherous,  punky  spots, 
Jacob  Thompson,  of  and  from  the  Interior.  And  still 
lower,  Isaac  Toucey,  brought  on  from  Hartford,  Con- 
necticut, looking  like  a  Dismal  Swamp  cedar,  quite 
unfit  for  navy  purposes,  or  in  fact  for  aught  but  the 
flanges  of  a  dredging-machine,  working  up  stagnant 
fever-and-ague  channels. 

The  cotton-seeds,  so  widely  planted  by  Douglas,  J. 
Davis,  Brooks,  Taney,  A.  H.  Stephens,  and  others,  dur- 
ing the  preceding  four  years,  now  sprouted  up  in  vig- 
orous shoots.  A  Constitution,  hastily  shaken  together 
by  self-made  delegates,  mostly  from  Missouri,  riding  in 
foamy  haste  to  Lecompton,  was  tied  with  a  very  black 
cord  and  sent  to  Washington,  to  be  indorsed  as  a  good 
thing  for  Kansas.  Mr.  Douglas  struck  it  with  his 
dike-cleaver ;  but  Mr.  J.  Davis,  J.  M.  Mason,  John  Sli- 


COTTON-SEEDS   SPROUT. 


451 


x 


452     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

dell,  —  booted  Knights  of  the  African  Order  of  the 
Woolly  Fleece,  —  re-tied  the  severed  strings  and  lifted 
it  through  the  halls  of  Congress. 

Meanwhile,  the  Mormons  in  Utah,  getting  up  a  sort 
of  magic-lantern  show  of  a  rebellion,  —  outlining  on 
the  rocky  walls  of  the  Salt  Lake  basin,  the  shadowy 
procession  of  females  looking  defiantly  at  United  States 
cannon  and  canons,  —  caused  a  momentary  diversion 
from  the  new  and  growing  question  of  a  single  Union. 

The  next  year,  1858,  Minnesota,  first  penetrated  by 
La  Salle  in  1680,  a  year  before  William  Penn  stood, 
for  the  first  time,  on  the  future  site  of  Philadelphia, 
was  brought  in  as  a  State,  giving  us  St.  Paul  as  a 
northwestern  Cuba  for  consumptives,  Fort  Snelling  for 
gamblers  in  public  lands,  and  the  rather  low  Falls  of 
Minnehaha  to  be  raised  by  a  Long-fellow  into  a  lofty 
iridescence,  whose  rainbow  strands  have  been  woven 
into  heavenly  fabrics  in  so  many  delighted  households, 
American,  European,  and  Asiatic.  On  paper  it  is  poet- 
ically higher  by  many  feet,  iambic  and  trochean,  than 
Niagara,  or  even  the  Falls  of  the  Yosemite. 

The  same  year  witnessed  in  Illinois  the  war  of  the 
giants  for  the  vacant  Senatorship.  The  two  Anaks 
were  the  dike-breaker  and  one  Abraham  Lincoln,  then 
forty-nine  years  old,  whose  various  residences  in  differ- 
ent States,  in  Kentucky,  his  birthplace,  in  Indiana 
and  Illinois,  had  taught  him  the  value  of  the  Union ; 
and  whose  arm,  sinewy  with  labor,  and  made  more 
vigorous  by  his  largely  pumping  heart,  dealt  blows 
which  resounded  sharply  and  broadly  beyond  the 
prairie  fields  which  saw  the  encounter. 

A  self-made  man  is  too  common  an  object  in  Amer- 


COTTON-SEEDS   SPROUT.  453 

ica  to  excite  or  deserve  special  attention ;  and  most 
self-made  men,  so  called,  are  distressingly  selfish,  un- 
symmetrical,  and  one-sided,  —  poor  jobs  abandoned  by 
all  creators  but  themselves.  Even  if  they  did  not 
proclaim  their  self-structure  to  all,  every  one*  would  at 
once  recognize  it  by  its  disjointed  architecture.  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  an  exception.  More  strictly  speaking,  he 
was  rather  a  growth  than  a  creation.  In  his  steadily 
increasing  gentle  greatness,  he  reminds  one  of  those 
slender  rills  which  hesitatingly  creep  out  from  some 
modest,  unvisited  nook  in  the  Alleghanies,  noiselessly 
finds  its  way  many  unnoticed  miles,  until  it  begins  to 
glint  between  cleared  farmsteads,  and  swells  slowly  into 
a  broad  stream,  whose  brawny  shoulders  turn  with  ease 
mills  and  factories  along  its  beneficent  course.  Then 
gathering  volume,  depth,  and  power,  it  upbears  barges, 
into  which  whole  districts  have  emptied  their  rich 
cornucopias,  and  pleasure-boats,  gay  with  genial  tour- 
ists ;  while  along  its  great  triumphal  sea- ward  march 
villages,  towns,  and  cities  clap  their  hands  with  admir- 
ing joy.  Mr.  Douglas  is  the  same  low-born  rill, 
which  soon,  however,  swells  into  the  hurrying  torrent, 
clattering  over  jagged  rocks,  between  bold,  mountain- 
ribbed  canyons,  jarring  the  earth  with  its  audacious 
plunges,  shaking  defiantly  its  foamed  way  through 
gaps  and  rent  gashes,  until  it  hurls  its  massed  waters 
over  fields  which  it  sweeps  witli  disastrous  grandeur. 

Although  the  popular  vote  in  Illinois  was  in  Mr. 
Lincoln's  favor,  the  legislative  ballots  were  for  his  con- 
testant. The  new  questions  now  illuminated  news- 
papers, platforms,  and  domestic  hearthstones. 

Bonfires,  colored  lights,  and  pyrotechnic  displays  of 


454    THE   COMIC   HISTORY  OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

oratory  soon  lit  up  the  whole  Union,  and  through  the 
varied  flames  ever  interplayed  the  figure  of  the  Afri- 
can. 

Suddenly,  in  the  autumn  of  1859,  through  the  lurid 
light  was  thrust  a  gaunt,  resolute,  earnest-looking  form, 
with  a  face  calm  with  long  excitement,  over  whose 
lines  ran  the  savage  history  of  Kansas  murders  and 
house-burnings,  fatal  shots  from  border  rifles  at  welt- 
loved  sons,  midnight  escapes  from  Lecompton  riders, 
and  years  of  hunted  violence  and  wrong.  From  the 
close-shut  jaws,  —  seldom  opened  now  except  for  food, 
for  brief  prayer  before  some  new  raid,  or  for  an  im- 
precation wrenched  out  by  some  cruel  recollection,  — 
come  no  sounds.  Across  the  bridge  at  Harper's  Ferry, 
through  the  scared  streets  of  that  little  garrisoned 
place,  and  next  into  the  jail  it  stalks.  Then  it  flits 
into  court,  calmer  than  the  personated  Justice,  and 
then,  marched  between  files  of  soldiers,  to  fence  off  a 
phantom  invasion,  it  mounts  the  scaffold.  An  old 
man,  with  a  grim  smile  stranded  on  the  iron  rim  of  his 
lips,  swings  in  Virginia  air,  and  —  John  Brown's  soul 
goes  marching  on. 

On  the  Southern  heart  this  Quixotic  invasion  by  a 
mistaken,  personally  injured  father,  maddened  by  the 
losses  of  his  sons,  and  unjustifiably  wreaking  his  indi- 
vidual injuries  on  a  community  innocent  of  any  wrong 
to  him,  laid  a  live,  inflaming  coaL 

In  April,  1860,  the  Democratic  Convention  met  at 
Charleston.  Some  gentlemen  asked  that  body  to  de- 
clare its  belief  that  the  Union,  having  been  got  up 
principally  to  hold  Africans  in  an  unpaid  condition, 
any  imcolored  owner  could,  by  virtue  of  the  laws  of  his 


COTTON-SEEDS   SPROUT.  455 

own  State,  take  these  bronze-colored  bipeds,  —  always 
diffusing  a  bad  odor  unless  to  their  proprietors,  —  to 
any  Territory.  Not  holding  such  a  notion,  the  Con- 
vention declined  to  make  the  declaration,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  asserted  that  each  Territory  was  competent 
to  deal  with  the  matter  as  it  saw  fit.  The  question, 
thus  resolved,  was  not  of  course  to  the  minority  satis- 
factorily solved. 

Following  a  convenient  practice,  deemed  by  some 
persons,  unschooled  in  such  things,  a  little  uncommon 
among  gentlemen,  of  getting,  if  possible,  a  decision 
favorable  to  their  views  which  shall  bind  the  minority, 
and  if  unsuccessful  repudiating  the  adverse  decision 
as  affecting  them,  the  delegates  of  six  bronze-statued 
States  left  the  unreasonable  party,  carrying  a  banner 
with  a  dimly  seen  inscription,  "  Heads  I  win,  tails  you 
lose,  or,  tails  I  win,  heads  you  lose."  The  convention, 
thus  treated  to  Breckinridge  principles,  adjourned  to 
meet  in  June  at  Baltimore. 

Meanwhile,  in  May,  the  missionary  party,  rein- 
forced by  numerous  converts,  assembled  and  chose 
the  Anak  of  Illinois  as  their  leader.  In  June  the 
widowed  Democratic  Convention  reassembled;  but 
only  to  split  up  into  two  family  divisions,  the  one 
nominating  the  dike-breaker,  the  other  John  C.  Breck- 
enridge,  then  Vice-President,  and  destined  in  a  few 
years  to  take,  not  the  Presidency,  but  the  very  first 
prize  for  a  character  which  total  depravity  is  occasion- 
ally permitted  to  offer,  lest  fiction  may  invent  a  com- 
bination that  shall  outstrip  reality. 

Of  course  the  Drummond  lights  now  burned  bright- 
er. Tar  and  oratory  illumined  corner  groceries  and 


456     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

open-air  meetings.  Small  men,  set  to  the  large  honor 
of  presiding  over  these  gatherings,  which  in  an  hour  or 
two  settled  "  the  most  stupendous  questions  that  free- 
men were  ever  called  to  meet,"  became  apoplectic,  and 
were  only  saved  to  their  country  by  an  application  at 
the  nearest  bar-room  of  a  remedy  reduced  to  a  pre- 
scription in  which 

Aqua-vitae  .....  92  parts, 
Aqua-pura  .  .  .  .  |  part, 
Saccharum 1\  parts, 


restored  them  to  par,  or  100  proof. 

When  in  November,  1860,  the  lights  were  put  out, 
it  appeared  that  Mr.  Lincoln  had  received  180,  Mr. 
Breckenridge  72,  Mr.  Bell  39,  and  the  Douglas  12 
electoral  votes.  There  were  130,773  more  ballots  cast 
even  at  the  South  against  Mr.  Breckenridge  than  in 
his  favor.  His  opinion  of  the  Union,  for  which  he 
had  run  out  of  breath  to  be  President,  was  now,  of 
course,  very  unfavorable ;  but  as  it  was  balanced  by 
its  kindred  opinion  of  him,  he  was  under  no  obligation 
to  confirm  its  judgment  by  taking  the  first  prize  soon 
after  offered  to  him. 

South  Carolina,  which  had  often  been  outvoted  before, 
only  waited  this  time  four  days  —  not  stopping  long 
enough  to  see  if  she  was  hurt,  or  how  the  heads-and- 
tails  flag  would  look — before  calling  a  convention  which 
more  Cariolense  substantially  resolved  that  the  Union 
had  broken  the  Union,  and  that  the  people  who  voted 
differently  from  South  Carolina  were  unconstitutional, 
and  ergo,  that  she  might  have  her  own  Constitution 


COTTON-SEEDS   SPROUT.  457 

and  by-laws.  She  had  helped  to  rule  the  roast  so  long 
that  she  could  not  think  of  taking  turns  now. 

Congress  met  in  December,  1860.  Of  course  John 
C.  Breckenridge  was  on  hand.  To  him  the  Union  was 
a  good  thing  so  long  as  he  could  preside  over  its  rep- 
resentatives. While  caucusing  nights  against  it,  he 
could  sit  in  daylight  to  administer  oaths  —  and  even 
to  take  them  —  to  support  it. 

The  message  was  full  of  unginned  cotton-seeds  vig- 
orously sprouting.  It  charged  the  attempted  burglary 
of  the  Union  safe,  not  on  the  burglars,  but  upon  its 
owners.  It  eluded  the  people  for  having  done  wrong 
in  electing  an  Anak  so  absurd  as  not  to  agree  with 
South  Carolina  on  the  little  dark-skinned  question; 
proposed  several  Africanizing  amendments  to  the  Fed- 
eral Constitution,  and  then  floundered  into  the  author's 
chronic  chaos ;  seeming  at  one  moment  to  believe  that 
a  State  could  not  secede,  then  again  that  it  rather 
could  ;  then,  that  if  it  did,  it  ought  not  to  ;  but  then  if 
it  ought  not  to,  who  could  prevent  it  if  it  did ;  and  if 
it  did  not,  why  the  fire-flies  did  not  hold  out  their  lit- 
tle lanterns  long  enough  to  light  him,  or  in  fact  any 
one  else  that  he  knew  of,  across  the  miry  place. 

The  old  hickory-tree  had  manifestly  been  chopped 
down  and  a  very  spongy  bass-wood  had  been  substi- 
tuted in  the  Federal  grounds. 

During  January,  1861,  Mississippi,  Florida,  Alabama, 
Georgia,  and  Louisiana  somehow  did  something,  in 
some  way,  somewhere,  by  somebody,  —  as  did  Texas  in 
the  month  of  February  following,  —  which  was  claimed 
by  the  head-and-tails  party  in  the  South,  as  indicating 
the  popular  conviction  that  Sambo  was  the  only  proper 
20 


458    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

object  of  care  by  Uncle  Sam ;  that  they  fancied  from 
what  they  suspected  that  the  Anak  Abraham  would 
not  carry  their  pet  lamb  in  his  bosom  as  it  had  been 
carried  ;  and  that  therefore  the  family  was  played  out. 
These  mysterious,  inexplicable  somethings,  by  some- 
body, somewhere  and  somehow,  were  gravely  labelled 
"  Ordinances  of  Secession."  Certain  it  is,  that  in  not 
one  of  these  States,  except  in  Texas,  were  the  people 
consulted  about  or  called  to  ratify  these  very  grave 
resolves.  Having  only  three  months  before  voted 
against  their  incarnation,  —  the  prize-taker,  —  it  is  to 
be  presumed  that  they  would  hold  to  the  same  beliefs 
still,  in  the  absence  of  any  act  or  deed  on  the  part  of 
the  Anak  to  induce  a  change  of  opinion. 

The  uncomic  truth  is,  that  in  this  case,  as  in  so  many 
others  which  have  occurred  or  are  occurring  in  our 
political  history,  these  overwhelmingly  large  questions 
—  upon  which  hang  so  many  lives,  so  much  happiness 
or  suffering,  such  accumulated  stores  of  hard-earned 
savings  and  character  —  were  undertaken  to  be  an- 
swered by  a  few  cunning,  selfish,  dishonest,  narrow- 
headed  politicians,  audaciously  presuming  upon  what 
they  ignorantly  called  leadership,  —  in  the  absence  of 
men  engaged  in  more  honest  work,  of  clearer  head  and 
better  instincts,  —  who,  idle  hands  in  a  country  where 
all  just  men  are  busy,  too  proud  to  work,  too  poor  to  live 
without  the  proceeds  of  others'  labor,  ever  restless  and 
intriguing  for  luxurious  places  and  foremost  positions, 
find  that,  by  getting  up  a  strike,  they  can  preside, 
officer,  talk  to,  and  become  prominent  at  assemblages 
of  arrested  workmen,  and  live  from  their  accumulated 
fund. 


COTTON-SEEDS   SPROUT.  459 

Disturbed,  as  well  they  might  be,  by  these  mysterious 
ordinances,  forged  by  these  mischievous  idlers,  an  as- 
semblage of  white-headed  and  unwisely  patriotic  gen- 
tlemen met  at  Washington  to  get  rid  of  them.  Ord- 
nance would  undoubtedly  have  affected  it,  but  ordnance 
was  not  to  be  thought  of  by  those  who  were  recom- 
mending cotton-sprouts  and  hopelessly  tramping  after 
fire-flies. 

Some  of  the  Southern  Senators  gathered  up  their 
dark  robes,  and  loftily  chaffing  their  Northern  asso- 
ciates, strode  from  the  chamber. 

There  was  no  ordnance  in  Washington.  Of  course 
John  C.  Breckenridge  did  not  yet  follow  them ;  it  was 
more  profitable  to  him  and  the  ordinance  parties  to 
stay. 

John  B.  Floyd  dispersed  our  little  army  of  16,000 
men  into  small  squads  far  away  from  the  ordnance- 
makers.  He  knew  that  the  cotton-sprouts  would  grow 
better  unshaded  by  bayonets.  On  land  there  was  no 
ordnance  where  it  was  needed. 

General  Eobert  Anderson,  of  Southern  birth,  was,  in 
the  autumn  of  1860,  assigned  to  Charleston  Harbor,  and 
there  left  with  only  80  men  to  the  presumed  magnetic 
attractions  of  that  affirmative  place.  To  these  his  pat- 
riotism declined  to  be  drawn.  December  26,  1860,  he 
removed  from  Fort  Moultrie  to  Sumter,  two  miles 
farther  off  from  the  magnets.  For  eight  months  pre- 
ceding, Mr.  Floyd  had  sent  heaps  of  muskets  and  am- 
munition, as  desirable  compost  for  the  cotton-sprouts. 
Isaac  Toucey,  of  Hartford,  Connecticut,  of  a  cold  tem- 
perament, and  from  a  cool  latitude,  thought  the  health 
of  naval  officers  might  suffer  from  the  heats  of  Charles- 


460    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

ton,  Wilmington,  Savannah,  St.  Augustine,  Mobile,  and 
New  Orleans,  and  so  ordered  our  ships  to  rove  in  dis- 
tant seas. 

There  was,  therefore,  no  ordnance  off  the  seaboard. 

The  little  garrison  at  Fort  Surnter  now  became  the 
pivot  of  the  Union.  Around  the  question  of  its  rein- 
forcement the  Cabinet  swung  and  went  to  pieces.  Gen- 
eral Cass,  who  had  broken  his  sword  before  surrendering 
it  to  those  who  sought  to  prevent  our  Union,  now  broke 
his  heart  over  the  attempts  of  those  who  sought  to  shiver 
it  in  pieces.  He  was  succeeded  by  Jeremiah  S.  Black, 
a  gentleman  devoted  to  the  black  family  wrhen  en- 
chained, indifferent  to  them  when  free.  Floyd,  one 
of  the  ring-leaders  in  the  strike,  skedaddled  to  Virginia, 
followed  in  his  rapid  journey  by  an  indictment  for  hav- 
ing connived  at  the  withdrawal  of  S  870,000  worth  of 
bonds  from  Jacob  Thompson's  loosely  managed  Interior. 
His  place  was  taken  by  the  unbelieving  Thomas,  of 
Maryland,  who  soon  became  tangled  by  his  want  of 
faith,  and  was  succeeded  by  General  Dix,  who  had 
more  confidence  in  guns  than  in  Dixie. 

On  the  4th  of  February,  1861,  the  en-gulfed  States 
and  South  Carolina  sent  some  delegates  —  chosen  also 
somehow,  somewhere,  by  somebody,  in  some  way  un- 
known —  to  Montgomery,  Alabama,  to  a  convention, 
where  the  leading  strikers  of  course  got  upon  the  plat- 
form, and  had  the  principal  chairs.  They  proceeded 
forthwith  to  concoct  that  first-class  patent  medicine 
for  all  supposed  ills,  a  constitution.  In  the  compo- 
sition of  this  draught  radex  Africanus  largely  en- 
tered. It  was  to  be  poured  out  by  slaves,  and  taken 
every  waking  hour.  A  separate  government,  called 


COTTON-SEEDS  SPROUT. 


461 


462     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

the  Confederate,  was  set  up  by  these  somehow  dele- 
gates. 

A  flag  was  also  devised,  not  in  consonance  with 
the  avowed  object  of  its  bearers,  namely,  —  a  col- 
ored man  saddled  and  running  like  an  unpaid,  tireless 
velocipede  with  a  white  rider  in  the  seat  working 
its  shackled,  eccentric  way,  —  but  with  stars  and 
bars,  —  stars  ray  less  as  night,  and  bars  destined  to  be 
very  sinister  to  the  Southern  hopes,  and  eventually 
to  be  leaped  and  beaten  down  by  spirited  Northern 
trarnpers. 

To  be  President  of  this  African  Commonwealth,  the 
mysteriously  elected  delegates  invited  J.  Davis,  who 
was  as  ready  to  say  yes  as  the  old  niaid  who  had  done 
the  courting  for  a  series  of  years.  'Of  a  metaphysical 
turn  of  mind,  —  a  turn  around  which  all  State  rights 
arguments  wind  themselves  up,  —  sharp-visaged,  lean 
of  muscle,  leaner  of  conscience,  and  leanest  of  veracity, 
he  had,  after  being  educated  at  the  government  ex- 
pense at  West  Point,  tracked  office  with  a  faultless 
scent,  shown  much  pluck  during  the  Black  Hawk  and 
Mexican  wars,  gnawed  the  bone  of  repudiation  in 
Mississippi,  and  was  now  ready  to  bay  at  Federal 
flocks  wherever  they  appeared.  Like  John  Brown, 
Stonewall  Jackson,  and  those  hard  Scotch  fighters  who 
prayed  before  the  direst  slaughters,  he  was  most  devout 
just  before  writing  those  calm-looking,  philosophy- 
streaked  messages,  which  massacred  truth  with  a 
glaived  hand,  and  shamed  fiction  by  the  recital  of  atro- 
cities which  had  no  foundation,  except  at  Anderson- 
ville  and  in  the  Libby  Prison  at  Richmond. 

"While  these  active  heats  were  racing  on  the  edjres 


COTTON-SEEDS   SPROUT.  463 

of  the  government,  cold  chaos  brooded  at  the  centre. 
Through  the  rank  growth  of  cotton,  threatening  to 
overtop  everything  national,  only  fire-flies  still. 

At  last  the  weary  days  vanished.     Fourth  of  March 
came,  and  Mr.  B.  went  away  —  to  his  own  place. 


CHAPTEE  XVIII. 

OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM. 

The  Second  Generation  of  our  Great  Men  nearer  in  Time  but  not  in 
Affection.  —  Several  sufficient  Reasons  therefor.  —  Ingenious  Biog- 
raphers confusing  our  Verdicts  over  old  Offenders.  —  A  Latin  Quotation 
to  prove  an  Original  Remark.  —  Why  we  should  not  stick  to  old  Opin- 
ions. —  Sketches  of  Clay,  Calhoun,  and  Webster.  —  Parallels  do  not 
always  run  at  equal  Distances.  —  Three  Fates.  —  Original  Anecdote 
of  Webster.  —  Of  Lewis  Cass  and  Thomas  H.  Benton.  —  Why  double- 
chinned  Persons  are  satisfactory.  —  The  Plutocrats  Girard  and  Astor; 
how  they  made  Fortunes,  and  how  much.  —  John  Marshall  as  a  Judge, 
and  John  Trumbull  as  a  Painter.  —  Albert  Gallatin  skims  American 
Cream.  —  Rembrandt  Peale  and  Washington  Allston  described.  —  Why 
Felix  Grundy,  S.  S.  Prentiss,  J.  J.  Crittenden,  Samuel  Houston,  D.  D. 
Tompkins,  and  Others,  were  like  Shoots  grafted  upon  hardy  Native 
Stocks.  —  The  Senate  illuminated  by  J.  M.  Berrien,  S.  L.  Southard, 
W.  C.  Preston,  etc.,  Legare,  and  Butler.  —  A  full-length  Portrait  of 
Winfield  Scott.  —  Irving  delineated.  —  Drake,  Halleck,  and  Paulding. 
—  Fenimore  Cooper  descanted  upon.  —  Science  illustrated  by  Silli- 
man,  Hare,  and  Rush.  —  Descriptions  of  Prescott,  Mrs.  Sedgwick, 
Greenough,  and  Hawthorne.  —  How  well  the  Second  Set  persuaded  the 
Eighteenth  Century  over  into  the  Nineteenth. 


ETWEES  the  death  of  Washington  and  the  mid- 
die  of  the  nineteenth  century  grew  up  a  second 
and  numerous  generation  of  great  men.  "  Although 
nearer  to  us  in  time,  they  are  not  so  near  to  our  affec- 
tions as  the  elder  set.  Most  of  this  younger  race  some 
of  us  have  seen  ;  and  they  have  thus  lost  a  certain  his- 
toric grandeur  and  magnified  proportion,  always  lent 
by  hazy  distance  to  far-off  objects.  Most  of  them 
have  been  the  subjects  of  newspaper  attack,  of  conver- 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.  465 

sational  controversy,  of  party  assault  and  defence 
equally  damaging,  and  so  have  become  doubtfully,  per- 
haps disagreeably,  familiar.  Many  of  them  have  been 
brought  into  the  jurisdiction  of  our  partisan  praises 
and  censures  for  offences  against  our  political  principles 
or  passing  tastes.  Some  have  been  despatched  thence 
with  Arizona  justice,  others  by  New  York  equity.  Now 
we  have  reluctantly  dismissed  some  with  Scotch  ver- 
dicts of  "  not  proven,"  with  lurking  suspicions  more 
injurious  than  a  positive  Saxon  condemnation  of  "  guil- 
ty "  ;  and  anon,  we  have  banished  others  to  the  penal 
settlements  of  our  criminal  domain. 

Ingenious  biographers,  taking  up  characters  hitherto 
surrendered  to  the  public  executioner,  asking  for  re- 
views of  judgments  alleged  to  be  hasty,  and  setting 
forth,  in  an  attractive  way,  features  which  even  crimi- 
nals share  with  the  unindicted  and  facts  unstained, 
perhaps,  with  the  one  great  crime  which  slew  their 
reputations,  have  recently  argued  for  new  trials  with  a 
convincing  sophistry  that  few  can  resist  after  dinner, 
and  which  captivates  by  its  audacious  novelty.  All  of 
us  have  discovered  what  Tacitus  long  ago  so  tersely 
expressed,  —  our  readiness  to  listen  to  scandal,  and  our 
proneness  to  praise  ourselves  for  our  leniency  to  the 
maligned  :  — 

"  Livor  et  obtrectatio  pronis  auribus  accipiuntur ; 
quippe  adulationi  foedum  crimen  servitutis,  malignitati 
falsa  species  libertatis  inest." 

If  the  piizzled  are  generally  unsafe,  the  censorious 
are  usually  unfair  judges. 

Members  of  the  same  family,  too,  are  among  each 
other  as  likely  to  do  injustice  to  a  fellow-member  by 


406     1HE    COMIC    HISTORY    OF   THE    UNITED    STATES. 

their  jealous  criticisms,  as  they  are  apt  before  stran- 
gers to  make  themselves  and  their  fellows  ridiculous  by 
undiscriminating  praise. 

Over  many  mounds  in  our  national  cemetery  the 
time-stains  are  growing  very  dark  and  the  moss  thick 
and  undisturbed.  As  we  wander  among  these  with 
lips  less  pressed  and  stern,  with  perhaps  a  feeling 
of  repenting  forgiveness,  slow  though  it  be,  towards 
those  from  whom  politically  or  otherwise  we  have  dif- 
fered, and  with  occasional  touches  of  tenderness,  re- 
luctant though  at  first  they  may  come,  for  those  who 
nobly  erred,  if  err  they  did,  straining  for  the  right  but 
missing  it  from  the  dimness  of  the  light  which  they 
carried,  let  us  be  sure  that  in  strolling  often  amid 
these  head-stones,  we  shall  thereby  and  thereafter  be 
better  prepared,  by  turning  out  our  lower  selves,  to 
turn  over  profitably  and  pleasantly  the  pages  of  our 
newer  National  Album  which  holds  a  few  of  their  por- 
traits. If  on  its  first  leaves  we  are  confronted  by  the 
faces  of  those  whose  lineaments  —  like  Clay's,  Cal- 
houn's,  Webster's,  Grundy's,  Van  Buren's,  Quincy 
Adams's,  Jackson's,  and  others  —  are  associated  with 
watch-words  that  touch  party  animosities  that  were 
born  in  us  we  know  not  how  or  when,  and  survive  we 
know  not  why,  we  can,  at  least,  learn  to  be  justly  proud 
of  what  has  floated  out  from  the  drift-wood  and  dirty 
foam  of  ephemeral  politics,  which  now  no  longer  con- 
ceal their  sturdy  and  solid  timber  growths. 

CLAY,  CALHOUN,  and  WEBSTER  !  How  much  good 
ink  was  thrown  uselessly  away  in  bespattering  them 
with  blame  or  praise  for  the  half-century  during  which 
they  actively  and  industriously  braided  the  public 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.  467 

history  of  America  through  their  triple  biographies. 
Of  this  triumvirate,  Mr.  Clay  was  born  in  1777,  the 
two  others  five  years  later ;  Mr.  Calhoun  received  the 
baptism  of  death  in  1850,  two  years  before  his  life- 
long competitors.  They  were  the  three  American 
Fates,  holding  the  distaff,  the  thread,  and  the  shears 
of  its  history  and  administration.  Utterly  dissimilar 
in  the  place  and  circumstances  of  their  births,  educa- 
tions, trainings,  cultures,  and  courses,  they  yet  supplied 
for  each  other  the  only  parallels  over  that  wide  tract 
of  time  through  which  their  prolonged  lives  reached. 
In  the  House  and  in  the  Senate,  sometimes  on  the 
same  side,  but  oftener  congenially  opposed,  yet  ever 
divided  from  each  other  by  rival  ambitions,  they 
ennobled  the  scenes  in  which  they  spent  such  large 
forces.  The  American  Titans,  they  tossed  heavy  bars 
of  logic  with  such  ease,  wrestled  with  such  matching- 
power  and  balanced  success,  that  we,  growing  up  to 
the  gigantic  spectacles,  almost  lose  the  consciousness 
of  the  unwonted  masteries  that  have  so  grandly  played 
before  us.  And  yet,  somehow,  for  all  this,  compara- 
tively little  love  gathers  in  our  hearts  as  we  look  at 
those  well-remembered  faces;  the  large,  continental 
visage  of  Henry  Clay,  mapping  a  hemisphere  of  vast 
thoughts  and  generous  though  partisan  currents  of 
action  ;  the  lofty  sternness  of  John  C.  Calhoun,  cast 
in  a  Cato-like  mould,  heroic  and  defiant;  and  the 
square-blocked,  cubical,  almost  repulsive  mass,  out- 
lined into  the  head  of  Daniel  Webster,  which  looks,  or 
rather  is  looked  at,  as  if  it  had  for  several  centuries 
capped  the  pyramid  of  Cheops,  and  had  been  finally 
taken  down  with  state  ceremonies  and  transplanted  by 


468    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.  469 

the  Pasha  to  America,  as  a  testimony  of  his  concep- 
tion of  our  large  exceptional  growth. 

Sadder  than  a  professed  comedy  or  a  prepared  fu- 
neral oration  over  a  rich  but  bad  man  is  the  unsatisfied 
ambition  of  such  tough  athletes  in  the  political  arena, 
who,  after  a  long  life  of  great  rough  play,  break  up 
into  common  earth,  and  form  the  subjects  for  Com- 
mencement day  or  prize  compositions  in  an  open 
grove,  where  young  ladies  in  white,  bound  in  blue- 
belting-ribbons,  summon  their  uneasy  ghosts  before 
the  dull-eyed  umpires.  From  what  a  cold  well-depth 
sprang  to  the  curb  of  Webster's  lips  those  soliloquiz- 
ing words  which,  a  few  days  before  his  death,  over- 
flowed from  a  disappointed  life.  Sitting  in  an  open 
doorway  at  Marshfield,  propped  up  by  pillows,  he 
looked  out  upon  his  favorite  herd  of  cattle,  which 
were  driven  up  for  the  last  inspection  of  their  attached 
owner.  As  the  fine  animals  passed  and  turned  their 
large  eyes  upon  him,  —  some  pausing  and  looking  a 
fond  recollection  into  his  scarcely  wasted  face,  —  he 
ejaculated,  as  his  thoughts  turned  backward  over  the 
slights  of  party  and  the  disappointments  of  an  un- 
satisfied life  :  "  I  love  the  honest  faces  of  animals. 
They  look  what  they  mean." 

Arriving  in  the  world  the  same  year  with  Mr. 
"Webster,  Mr.  Calhoun,  and  each  other,  LEWIS  CASS, 
portly  in  presence  as  in  learning,  varied  capacity,  and 
many-sided  culture,  and  THOMAS  H.  BENTON,  as  solid 
as  the  bullion  which  a  dim  tradition  mentions  as 
formerly  found  in  these  United  States,  meet  us  with 
that  full-orbed  spherical  satisfaction  which  double- 
chinned  persons  are  fortunate  in  imparting,  if  not  of 


470    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

feeling  themselves.  The  "  Becollections  of  Thirty 
Years  in  the  Senate "  would,  one  would  think,  be 
enough  to  reduce  any  mortal  to  very  attenuated  pro- 
portions. Fortunate  is  the  memory  of  any  M.  C. 
which  is  constructed  like  a  mining-sieve,  letting 
through  the  superabundant  dirt  and  retaining  only  the 
loosely  silted  ore. 

ANDKEW  JACKSON  and  JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS,  des- 
tined to  be  rivals  for  the  Presidency  in  the  fifty- 
seventh  and  again  in  the  sixty-first  years  of  their 
lives,  were  severally  born  nine  years  before  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence.  Their  lives  were  as  unlike 
as  their  faces.  The  former  passed  his  first  score  of 
years  in  the  hard  struggles  for  a  livelihood,  and  mostly 
amid  the  scenes  made  memorable  by  the  cavalry 
swords  of  Marion  and  Sumter  and  the  pen  of  William 
Gilmore  Sims ;  the  latter  spent  his  in  the  study  of 
what  could  best  round  up  a  capable  mind  by  disci- 
pline and  learning,  and  in  the  equally  advantageous 
culture  derived  from  the  society  of  his  accomplished 
mother  and  experienced  father.  While  the  stormy 
incidents  of  an  eventful  military  life  in  Florida  and 
Georgia,  intercalated  with  court-martials  and  official 
censures,  scored  in  Jackson's  face  the  notches  which, 
until  his  death  in  1845,  kept  truthful  tally  with  his 
warm,  violent,  generous,  resentful,  and  stern  history ; 
over  the  round,  uncreased  face  of  Adams  ran  the 
smoothing-iron  of  literary  tastes  and  pursuits,  keep- 
ing down  the  ruffling  disturbances  of  a  naturally  pas- 
sionate nature,  and  the  ridges  which  the  excitements 
from  1824  to  1828,  and  the  antislavery  agitations  in 
the  latter  part  of  his  life,  would  have  otherwise  left 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL   ALBUM.  471 

Jackson's  virtues  deserve  signal  praise,  and  Adams's 
vices  emphatic  censure ;  since  the  former  grew  up 
under  circumstances  as  unfavorable  to  their  existence 
as  a  young  ladies'  seminary  for  modesty,  or  a  New 
York  sheriffs  office  for  integrity ;  and  the  latter  amid 
forces  as  unassailing  as  a  prayer-meeting  to  piety  or 
sleep  to  pure  thoughts. 

Types  of  American  character  in  many  respects  are 
the  originals  of  the  two  thin-faced  portraits  to  which  we 
next  turn,  —  types  in  their  foreign  birth,  their  obscure 
social  belongings,  and  their  shrewd  and  successful  busi- 
ness ventures,  —  STEPHEN  GIEARD,  coming  into  life  in 
1750,  at  Bordeaux,  France,  as  acid  as  the  claret  of 
his  native  city,  and  commanding,  like  it,  very  profitable 
prices  by  transportation  to  this  country,  a  sailor's  son, 
and  until  his  nineteenth  year  himself  a  sailor ;  and 
JOHN  JACOB  ASTOR,  his  junior  by  thirteen  years,  off- 
spring of  a  poverty-worried  peasant,  ushered  first  into 
a  cabin  at  Waldorf,  near  Heidelberg,  where  black  bread 
and  small  hopped  beer  were  all  that  incessant  labor 
could  procure.  The  former  lived  eighty-one,  the  latter 
eighty-five  years  upon  our  planet ;  and  by  faithfully 
gathering  up  from  its  surface,  water  and  land,  from  its 
ships,  stores,  and  offices,  and  from  its  furred  and  un- 
furred  animals,  the  gains  which  persistent  early  rising, 
industry,  and  ceaseless  penny-turning  accumulate,  left 
fortunes,  the  first  of  nine,  the  last  of  twenty  millions 
of  dollars. 

"  Sic  itur  ad  Astra." 

The  Astral-lamp  Library,  obtained  by  funds  be- 
queathed by  a  benefaction,  like  Girard's  College,  ap- 
preciative of  what  its  donor  had  himself  missed,  sheds 


472    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

its  genial  light  on  many  a  poor  scholar's  desk.  If  each 
legacy  has  been  somewhat  diverted  from  its  testamen- 
tary direction,  perhaps  the  best  excuse  may  be  found 
in  the  reason  why  married  women  were  not  allowed  to 
have  their  wills  after  death,  because  they  had  them  so 
much  while  living. 

JOHN  MARSHALL,  to  whose  unmistakably  pure- 
minded  face  we  turn  in  safe  admiration,  was  one  of 
those  types  of  leadership,  one  of  those  representatives 
of  schools,  who,  violently  liked  or  disliked  when  living, 
has  by  the  touch  of  death  been  canonized  among  the 
white-robed  of  the  nation.  An  incarnation,  when  alive, 
of  Federalism,  his  ermine  has  become  so  white  under  the 
fulling  of  time  and  by  contrast  with  robes  since  worn,  and 
his  grasp  of  the  judicial  balances  was,  as  is  now  seen, 
so  firm,  so  unimpassioned  and  unshaken  by  a  nervous 
partisanship,  that  he  has  already  passed  into  the  very 
small  list  of  judges,  whose  lofty  character,  stainless 
purity,  large  judicial  capacities  and  force,  are  like  solid 
cool  rocks  amid  the  ever-shifting  scenes  and  temper- 
atures of  a  varied  landscape. 

An  artist's  head  sits  manifestly  on  the  shoulders  of 
JOHN  TRUMBULL,  born  in  1756,  a  year  after  John  Mar- 
shall, and  living  eight  years  beyond  him.  At  his  death 
in  1843,  he  left  but  few  as  aged.  His  busy  pencil 
dropped  in  1775  for  the  musket,  and,  resumed  in  1777, 
has  perpetuated  in  fifty-seven  historical  pictures,  with 
the  fidelity  and  love  of  personal  friendship,  the  portrait- 
ures of  most  of  the  leading  actors  in  the  first  period  of 
our  national  story.  He  was  President  of  the  Academy 
of  Fine  Arts,  from  its  formation,  in  1816,  until  it  gave 
place,  in  1825,  to  the  Academy  of  Design.  His  dress, 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.  473 

it  will  be  observed,  was  formally  and  scrupulously  in  the 
mode  ;  his  address  was  as  dressy  as  his  wristbands  and 
frills.  Quick-eyed  mothers  would  at  once,  as  he  took 
his  seat,  warn  the  children,  always  attracted  towards 
clean  vestments,  "  not  to  dirty  the  gentleman's  clothes." 

In  1761  ALBERT  GALLATIN  was  born.  Eelated  to 
Necker,  he  seems  to  have  borrowed  at  the  same  time 
much  of  the  financial  ability  of  the  French  minister, 
and  the  ready  wit,  graceful  imagination,  and  forceful 
word-power  of  the  minister's  brilliant  daughter,  Ma- 
dame de  Stael.  He  crammed  eighty-eight  years  full  of 
remarkable  activities,  as  ambassador  to  Eussia,  France, 
Great  Britain,  and  Holland,  as  member  of  Congress, 
and  as  a  weighty  yet  captivating  and  vivacious  writer 
on  banks,  public  credit,  currency,  and  those  subjects, 
ever  rising,  like  cream,  on  the  public  pans,  which  are 
skimmed  by  the  most  skilfully  handled  ladles. 

Turning  the  page,  we  meet  the  thought-bearing  faces 
of  REMBRANDT  PEALE,  born  in  1778,  and  below,  that 
of  his  brother  artist,  WASHINGTON  ALLSTON,  the  Amer- 
ican Paul  Veronese,  who,  Peale's  junior  by  a  year, 
ceased  his  earthly  work  in  1853,  seven  years  before 
him.  The  serenity  of  congenial  pursuits  gilds  their 
portraitures,  and  lingers  like  an  aureola  around  their 
heads.  Upon  Allston's  face  there  seems  spread  a  lis- 
tening look,  as  if  straining  to  catch  far-off  notes, 
mingled  with  that  gentle  hush  and  composure,  as  if 
stilled  by  that  music  so  subtily  described  by  Words- 
worth, which 

"  Born  of  murmuring  sound,  had  passed  into  his  face." 

A  tree  does  not  show  more  markedly  than  man  the 


474    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

results  of  ancestral  care,  wealth,  and  leisurely  culture. 
Numerous  are  the  faces  and  histories  scattered  all 
through  our  national  album,  which  are  signalized  by  a 
curious  mixture  of  original  forest  wildness  and  park 
growths  newly  begun,  cultivated  shoots  grafted  upon 
hardy  native  stocks,  and  giving  off  large  unsymmetri- 
cally  shaped  fruits,  —  fruits  less  sour  than  the  natural, 
but  less  genial,  plump,  mellow,  and  blooming  than  the 
full-nursed  growth.  Of  these  were,  in  oratory,  FELIX 
GRUNDY,  whose  exposed  youth  shot  up  on  the  wilder- 
ness frontier  of  Kentucky,  where  "  death  was  in  almost 
every  bush,  and  an  ambuscade  in  every  thicket,"  and 
who  attained,  in  Tennessee,  a  large  altitude  and  breadth ; 
SARGEANT  S.  PRENTISS,  transplanted  from  among  the 
pines  of  Maine  to  the  coarse  richness  of  a  Mississippi 
soil,  and  through  whose  waving  tops  swept  sometimes 
the  storm  of  invective,  sometimes  the  seolian  strains 
of  tenderest,  soul-trembling  breathings  ;  JOHN  J.  CRIT- 
TENDEN,  a  farmer's  boy,  born  in  1785,  whose  prickly 
logic  sheathed,  like  a  burr,  the  smooth-meated  chest- 
nut ;  and,  among  statesmen,  SAMUEL  HOUSTON  of  Texas, 
shaggy-barked,  yet  with  much  tasselling  wealth  of 
flower  at  the  top  ;  DANIEL  D.  TOMPKINS  of  New  York, 
and  a  large  number  of  others,  strong  saplings,  pushing 
up  in  brave  defiance  of  adversities,  some  wrought  into 
bureaus,  others  inlaying  cabinets,  —  American  woods, 
some  still  sappy  and  cross-grained,  but  making  as  good 
state  furniture  as  an  untechnical  taste  has  hitherto 
been  content  to  demand  or  use. 

Glancing  through  our  book,  —  in  which  we  treasure 
only  the  portraits  of  the  departed,  —  we  dwell  with 
satisfaction  upon  a  group  of  high-toned,  conscientious, 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.  475 

Christian  statesmen,  who  honored  public  office  in  their 
persons,  and  shed  upon  the  Senate  a  light  so  effulgent, 
that  the  many  opaque  substances,  so  often  thrust  into 
it,  have  not  been  able  wholly  to  absorb :  JOHN  MAC- 
PHERSON  BERRIEN,  born  in  1781 ;  THEODORE  FRELING- 
HUYSEN  and  SAMUEL  L.  SOUTHARD,  in  1787;  and  WIL- 
LIAM C.  PRESTON  in  1794;  with  whom  are  worthily 
associated  HUGH  S.  LEGARE,  whose  fine  face  brought 
its  welcome  into  every  company,  as  his  radiant  mind 
sparkled  and  scintillated  over  every  subject ;  and  BEN- 
JAMIN F.  BUTLER  of  New  York,  whose  clear-cut  phys- 
iognomy, like  an  antique  on  a  fine  stone,  shows  hand- 
somely in  every  setting. 

WINFIELD  SCOTT  came  into  life  in  1786,  and  so  crys- 
tallized about  himself  each  of  the  three  wars  in  which 
he  was  the  principal  magnet,  —  the  maritime  contest  of 
1812,  the  Mexican  war  in  1847,  and  the  opening  of 
the  Eebellion  in  1861,  —  that  his  calm  front  and  majes- 
tic presence  would  readily  single  him  out  as  the  model 
figure  for  our  American  Mars.  Like  a  great  elm  in  the 
Berkshire  valley  he  stands,  massive  in  strength  of 
trunk,  spreading  out  in  varied  branches  of  learning, 
special  study,  and  active  experience,  and  dropping  his 
pendulous,  wide-circuiting  limbs  and  generous  foliage 
over  a  broad  expanse  of  rich  meadow.  Under  this 
vast,  wide-reaching,  many-dropping  banyan-tree  his- 
tory seems  to  gather  in  a  sleepy,  contented  calm. 

Dearly  do  we  all  love  to  pause  over  the  beautifully 
bordered  page  which  holds  the  genial,  sunny-faced 
visage  of  WASHINGTON  IRVING.  He  was  four  years 
old  when  Washington  delivered  his  first  Inaugural. 
Through  all  the  nineteenth  century  he  shines,  like  a 


476     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

blessed  presence,  until  his  eclipse,  in  1859.  How  our 
landscapes,  the  lives  of  our  best  and  worthiest,  the 
graceful  legends  of  our  rivers,  mountains,  prairies,  and 
historical  sites,  —  barren,  voiceless,  and  dumb  before, 
warm  into  life,  and  stretch  out  their  living  hands  in 
tender  entreaty,  instinct  and  round  with  charms  of  per- 
suasive beauty,  as,  like  the  prophet  over  the  child,  he 
stretches  himself  over  them  ! 

Of  some  of  his  associates  and  compeers,  still  happily 
spared  to  us,  we  cannot  speak ;  for  the  living  are  too 
numerous  to  be  enumerated,  and  too  near  to  be 
sketched ;  but  of  JOSEPH  RODMAN  DRAKE,  whose  brief 
twenty-five  years  of  life  exhaled  such  beautiful  and 
deathless  creations  as  the  Culprit  Fay ;  of  FITZ-GREEXE 
HALLECK,  his  companion  and  fellow-laborer,  whose  rare 
humor  stole  into  delicious  song,  as  sprites  are  said  to 
play  hide-and-seek  in  buttercups  and  honeysuckles  ; 
and  of  JAMES  R  PAULDING,  linked  in  literary  work  as 
by  family  ties  with  Irving,  and  whose  diversified  genius 
gives  him  a  large,  if  not  a  choice  place  in  our  Wal- 
halla,  —  of  all  these  kindly  faces  we  delight  to  keep 
copies  in  our  album. 

Like  Irving,  fortunate  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  wide 
European  reputation,  but  less  fortunate  than  he  in 
securing  the  undivided  hearts  of  his  countrymen,  — 
whose  early  history,  aboriginal  legends,  forest  scenery, 
and  naval  characters  he  has  so  well  tapestried  in  nov- 
els, essay,  biography,  and  history,  —  JAMES  FENIMORE 
COOPER,  born  in  1789,  has,  by  his  sea  tales,  caused 
many  a  mother's  heart  to  yearn  after  her  runaway  boy, 
and  by  his  land  stories,  garnered  up  many  of  our  best 
sheaves  of  fiction  into  a  national  stack.  As  we  gaze 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.  477 

on  his  large,  square,  massive  forehead,  we  forget  his 
sharply  feathered  arrows,  aimed  at  our  national  faults, 
which  generally,  of  course,  missed  the  conscience  and 
touched  only  the  liver.  Eemembering  "  The  Pioneers," 
"  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  "  The  Spy,"  "  Pilot,"  and 
"  Red  Rover,"  we  fall  to  blessing  the  creations  which 
stalk  over  our  rough  fences,  and  brush  away  our  raw 
villages,  uproarious  with  faces  of  civilized  red-men, 
and  so  endeavor  to  get  by,  as  boys  do  a  haunted  place 
at  nightfall,  the  recollection  of  those  twenty-two  libel 
suits,  whose  damages  he  found,  like  most  plaintiffs  in 
that  species  of  legal  fiction,  to  end  in  the  payment 
of  the  costs  out  of  his  own  pocket. 

Others  there  are,  too,  whose  physiognomies  recall  to 
us  pleasantly  the  explorers  in  science,  workers  amid 
Nature's  secrets,  earlier  than  those  who  now  push  their 
daring  way  into  her  very  robing-room  :  BENJAMIN  SlL- 
LIMAN,  the  elder,  who  came  in  1779,  and  through  a 
long  life  lectured  so  many  into  the  pleasant  idea  that 
they  knew  something  of  geology  and  chemistry,  and 
through  his  "Journal  of  Science,"  established  in  1818, 
gathered  up  the  mental  products  of  his  fellow-harvest- 
ers ;  ROBERT  HARE,  two  years  younger,  who,  at  the 
age  of  twenty,  invented  the  compound  blow-pipe,  and 
up  to  his  death,  in  1858,  continued  his  discoveries,  until 
he  left,  by  his  spiritual  explorations,  his  scientific  breth- 
ren behind  him;  and  BENJAMIN  RUSH,  born  in  1780, 
who  by  his  tasteful  style,  made  boluses  less  distasteful, 
and  even  gave  the  muses  such  a  draught  that  they  be- 
came delirious  over  his  medical  pages. 

WILLIAM  H.  PRESCOTT,  reserved  until  nearly  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century  ere  he  was  born,  and  becom- 


478     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

ing  blind  in  outward  vision  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  so 
clarified  his  inner  sight  and  quickened  it  to  the  percep- 
tion of  new  beauties,  and  so  perfected  himself  by  the 
grace,  gentleness,  and  cheerful  gayety  of  a  happy  nature, 
that  Peru,  Mexico,  the  times  of  Ferdinand,  Isabella,  and 
Philip  II.,  filtrated  through  them,  glow  in  splendor  and 
are  inwrought  and  outwrought  in  such  delicacy  of 
color  and  such  noble  boldness  as  to  make  him  stand 
out  in  singularly  beautiful  proportions  to  thousands 
of  loving  eyes,  that  have  never  rested,  and  will  now 
never  rest,  upon  his  fine  classic  head. 

Stop  we  a  moment  to  admire  the  intellectual  fea- 
tures of  CATHERINE  M.  SEDGWICK,  born  in  1798,  whose 
wise  essays  and  wiser  fictions  lie  upon  so  many  ta- 
bles ;  the  calm  head  of  HORATIO  GREENOUGH,  who  pro- 
duced his  first  work,  the  "  Chanting  Cherubs,"  upon  a 
commission  from  Fenimore  Cooper,  brought  out  the 
earliest  American  group  in  marble,  and  became  a  very 
Medusa,  turning  many  Americans  into  stone ;  and 
finally  the  grand,  quaint  physiognomy  of  NATHANIEL 
HAWTHORNE,  given  to  us  in  1804,  and  just  withdrawn, 
whose  genial  tales  and  humorous  descriptions  will 
keep  his  memory  as  odorous  as  woodbines  around  the 
porches  of  houses  seven-gabled,  mossed,  newly  Gothic, 
or  indifferently  green-shuttered,  and  up  to  their  eaves 
in  white  paint. 

Unwillingly  we  close  the  list ;  for  many  are  worthy* 
to  be  added,  who  have  laid  their  aching  brains  away, 
and  more  who  are  coining  from  their  living  thoughts  a 
mintage  more  national  than  greenbacks  and  not  half  so 
soiled. 

All  but  two  who   are   named  in   this   our  newer 


OUR  NEWER  NATIONAL  ALBUM.        479 

album  were  born  in  the  last  century,  and  drew  over  its 
wealth  with  them  and  piled  it  up  on  our  side.  Few 
of  them  lived  less  than  three,  and  several  more  than 
fourscore  years ;  showing  that  the  possession  of  intel- 
lect often  preserves  their  owners  to  a  longevity  as  great 
as  office  or  a  life  estate. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  WAR  OF   IDEAS    AND    MUSKETS  ;    OB,  LINCOLN'S    AD- 
MINISTRATION. 

1861-1865. 
IN  THREE  DIVISIONS. 

DIVISION  FIRST. 
COTTON  VEILS  HIDE  THE  Usiox.    MARCH  4,  1861,  TO  JANUARY  1,  1862. 

Striking  Historical  Contrasts  of  professed  Virtue  and  cruel  Enforcement. 

—  The  American  Fetich;   its  strange,  passionate  Worship  and  armed 
Adoration.  —  The  Freshet  of  Shivery  traced  from  its  small  Beginnings. 

—  Mr.   Lincoln  over  its   Ridges  lands  in  Washington.  —  A  Striking 
Announcement,  and  who  it  struck.  —  Of  Seward,  Cameron,  and  Chase. 

—  A  Naval  Joke.  —  A  Wry  Fort  makes  Wry  Faces.  —  An  American 
Nightmare.  —  Watching  with  the   Sleeper.  —  Sparing   the    Rod  and~~" 
getting  the  Ramrod.  —  Call   for  Seventy-five   Thousand  Ramrod?.  — 
Massachusetts   Boys  and   Baltimore    Hards.  —  Busses   and    Blunder- 
busses. —  Few  Office-Seekers,  but  many  Gun-Holders  in  Washington  in 
April,  1861.  —  The  English  Telescope  and  the  Wonders  it  discovered. 
— -A  Dual  View.  —  An  Official  Talk  between  two  Lords.  —  A  Procla- 
mation to  restrain  Englishmen.  —  A  Parallel.  —  War  Materials,  Forts, 
etc.,  generously  given  away  by  Loose-handed  Custodians.  —  Twiggs 
inclined  as  Tree  is  bent.  —  Cotton  Curtain  before  Washington ;   and 

a  near  View  of  it  by  General  Mansfield.  —  Colonel  Ellsworth.  —  But- 
ler and  Bethel.  —  Lyons  in  Missouri.  —  McClellan  moves  into  Virginia; 
what  he  found.  —  A  Wise  Man  flees  when  a  real  Man  pursueth. — 
Bull's  Run  and  General  Run.  —  A  Discovery  and  Noise  over  it.  — 
Stonewall  Jackson  and  Praying  Soldiers.  —  Piety  and  Powder.  —  A 
Drill-Ground  near  Washington.  —  General  Lee's  First  Kicks  against 
the  Pricks.— Du  Pont  at  Port  Royal.  —  Mason,  Slidell,  and  Vigilant 
Friends.  —  John  C.  Breckenridge  a  striking  Sign-Board.  —  War  in  the 
Mississippi  Valley.  —  Kentucky  and  her  coy  Ways. —  A  Spartan  Le- 
onidas  and  Greek  Ulysses.  —  Christmas  Eve,  1861. 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND  MUSKETS.  481 

ROBESPIEERE,"  says  a  terse,  sentence-packing 
essayist,  "  would  slay  one  half  of  France  to  get 
the  other  half  to  follow  his  principles  of  virtue." 

The  cotton  rebellion  is  another  illustration  of  the 
same  horrible  tenderness,  the  same  selfish  loveliness, 
the  same  unsentimental  sentimentalism. 

Like  the  strange  histories  of  Scylla,  of  Marius,  of 
Simon  de  Montfort  and  his  helmed  soldiery  against 
the  Waldenses,  of  Alva  in  the  Netherlands,  of  Philip 
II.,  and  of  Claverhouse,  in  Scotland,  it  exhibits  a  cour- 
age, endurance,  sacrifices,  and  heroism  which  exalt,  to 
compass  ends  which  debase  and  brutalize  human  nature. 

Setting  up  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, and  in  free,  much-reading  America,  a  fetich  for 
worship,  brought  from  Africa,  slimy  with  snakes,  foul, 
cruel,  deformed,  and  misshapen,  its  singularly  enthusias- 
tic votaries,  after  insisting  by  books,  tracts,  primers,  by 
philosophic  essay,  bound  treatise,  and  unbound  poetry, 
in  Congress,  conventions,  lecture-rooms,  prayer-meet- 
ings, horse-races,  and  in  all  places,  seasonable  or  un- 
seasonable, thirsty  or  wet,  that  the  fetich,  though 
repudiated  by  all  civilized  people,  was  the  true  and 
undoubted  patron  of  government,  society,  wealth,  pro- 
gress, and  human,  i.  e.  white-skinned  happiness,  at  last 
seized  musket  and  sword  to  maintain  and  perpetuate 
her  horrid  rites,  although  this  maintenance  should 
overturn  and  waste  all  other  shrines. 

The  cotton-gin  struck,  in  1793,  springs  all  over  the 
slave  States,  whose  multiplying  flows  so  gathered  head 
in  1821  as  to  require  damming  back.  The  Missouri 
dike  was  erected.  The  pent  waters,  however,  were 
found  so  profitable  for  foreign  mill-owners,  for  over-shot 
21  EE 


482     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

feeders  to  Northern  shelves,  for  commercial  pockets, 
and  political  ballot-boxes,  as  well  as  such  wealth-dis- 
tributing streams  over  the  growing  breadths  and  easy 
luxuries  of  their  Southern  owners,  that  expedients  were 
devised  to  swell  their  volume,  area,  and  back-water 
power.  The  dike,  cut  in  1854,  let  out  the  accumulated 
deluge  into  new  sluice-ways,  which  promised  to  some 
increased  profits,  but  which  produced  great  ravages  in 
many  ways,  and  at  last  set  towards  maelstroms,  down 
whose  gurgling  throats  were  sucked,  not  only  the  pas- 
sive and  floating  citizen,  and  the  compromising,  timid 
politician,  but  much  of  the  life  and  wealth  of  the 
nation  at  large. 

Over  the  angry  ridges,  rapidly  rising  on  the  4th 
of  March,  1861,  Mr.  Lincoln,  uneasy  at  the  white  caps 
crisping  the  dark  swells,  and  himself  in  disguise, 
landed  at  the  national  wharf  in  Washington.  With- 
out disguise,  however,  he  at  once,  in  a  distinct,  calm 
voice,  announced  the  principles  upon  which  he  pro- 
posed to  meet  the  menacing  flood,  namely,  not  to  inter- 
fere with  its  black  tides  in  States  where  they  were 
legally  channelled,  nor  to  create  any  new  courses  in 
Territories  in  which  they  had  not  surged,  and  steadily 
to  enforce,  in  spite  of  all  obstructions,  the  existing 
rules,  regulations,  and  laws  both  North  and  South. 

This  announcement  struck  the  knob  of  the  national 
shield,  and  its  metallic  notes  quivered  through  the  air. 
The  three  commissioners,  despatched  from  the  some- 
how gathered  Confederate  assemblage  at  Montgomery, 
heard  the  vibrations  the  morning  of  their  arrival, 
March  5th,  but  failed  to  shout  loud  enough  to  be 
heard  themselves,  and  returned  speedily  with  their 
cross-barred  message. 


THE   WAR   OF   IDEAS  AND  MUSKETS. 


483 


COTTON  SCPEEMI. 


484     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Attention  was  immediately  directed  to  the  ravelled 
American  stocking  rapidly  running  down.  The  blue 
yarn  of  the  navy  was  taken  up  stitch  by  stitch.  The 
threads  of  the  little  army  were  picked  up,  lying  loosely 
around  at  a  distance  from  the  capital,  and,  by  much 
knotting  and  splicing,  were  put  upon  the  old,  rusty, 
war-needles  for  work.  It  was  very  sad  business  for 
the  gentle-minded  Lincoln,  although  helped  by  Mr. 
Seward  in  the  State  Department,  —  a  very  vigorous  and 
manifold  letter-writer,  —  by  the  wide-headed  Chase  in 
the  Treasury,  by  the  strong-knuckled  Cameron  in  the 
noisy  War  Bureau,  and  by  that  long-bearded  Gideon 
Welles,  whose  unthatched  upper  story  became  in  time, 
like  a  naval  depot,  the  receptacle  of  a  great  deal  of 
odd  material,  most  of  it  too  old  to  be  serviceable.  In 
truth,  with  his  funny  ways,  dropping  anchor  when  he 
should  be  making  steam,  bothered  with  new  inven- 
tions, gun  bores  and  spiral  devices,  which  he  had  never 
seen  at  Hartford,  and  quite  incomprehensible  often  by 
any  one,  puzzled  by  stern  duties  and  running  about  to 
know  where  the  ship's  waste  was,  the  latter  old  gen- 
tleman was  about  the  only  joke  which  went  about  for 
four  years. 

Notice  by  the  government  of  its  intention  to  add  to 
the  eighty  men  in  Fort  Sumter  drew  upon  that  little 
stone  pentagon  a  lively  cannonade  of  thirty-six  hours, 
by  General  Beauregard,  the  Confederate  military  leader, 
distorting  its  resolute  visage,  and  causing  wry  faces 
everywhere  throughout  the  North,  and  very  many 
among  the  strikers  at  the  South. 

The  first  whizzing  shot  was  the  first  uneasy  spasm 
in  that  horrible  nightmare  which  crept  over  America 
and  held  it  bound  for  four  years. 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  485 

For  the  sake  of  human  nature ;  for  the  sake  of  our 
common  past,  and  our  now  dawning  brighter  future, 
we  would  fain  draw  over  the  face  of  the  disturbed 
sleeper  a  veil,  which  should  but  dimly  delineate,  if  it 
did  not  altogether  hide  from  view,  the  uncoffmed 
ghastliness.  The  purposes  of  history,  however,  forbid 
us,  nurses  as  we  are  in  trouble,  as  boon  companions  in 
feasting,  to  quit  the  room ;  and  so  holding  still,  as 
best  we  can,  the  hand  of  genial  Humor,  we  sit  down 
amid  the  uncomic  scenes  of  a  fratricidal  struggle. 

Through  the  evening  silences  which  followed  the 
evacuation  of  Fort  Sumter,  April  14,  1861,  were  heard 
at  Montgomery  and  in  other  Confederate  cities  rhetor- 
ical voices  of  gratulation  at  the  humbled  pride,  flag, 
and  prosperity  of  the  North,  and  predictions  of  bold 
equestrian  sallies  into  Washington,  Philadelphia,  New 
York,  and  Boston ;  at  the  North,  wails  of  sorrow,  sud- 
den questions  of  the  causeless  blows  on  the  tingling 
national  cheek,  mixed  with  remorseful  self-accusations 
at  the  weak  petting,  which  had  so  encouraged  unre- 
strained tempers  as  to  invite  to  this  public  breaking 
of  the  family  crockery  and  this  upconcealable  family 
disgrace.  "Had  not  the  rod  been  so  long  spared," 
—  was  the  general  feeling,  — "  we  should  now  be 
spared  the  use  of  the  ramrod."  The  next  morning, 
however,  Mr.  Lincoln  proclaimed  the  need  of  seventy- 
five  thousand  ramrods,  with  good  men  to  accompany 
them  to  Washington.  At  the  same  time  he  asked 
the  wise  men  to  meet  at  the  capital  in  July  for  con- 
sultation. Ere  the  next  daybreak,  a  thousand  Massa- 
chusetts lads  were  on  their  way  towards  the  Potomac, 
shining  in  new-burnished  steel  and  new  polished  love 


486     THE  COMIC   HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

for  that  old  Union  mother,  whose  goodness  had  been  so 
steady  and  uniform  as  hitherto  to  excite  no  manifested 
return.  On  the  19th  of  April  they  reached  Baltimore, 
and  were  passing  through  in  the  horse-cars,  when  they 
were  set  upon  by  a  bad  lot  of  hards  and  softs  of  that 
city,  —  as  others  before  and  since  have  frequently  been 
assailed  in  their  transit,  by  railway  and  hotel  runners. 
Other  regiments  soon  followed  from  "the  teeming 
North,  through  all  her  unfrozen  loins."  Guns  were 
got  down  from  rusted  hooks ;  shoulder-straps  straight- 
ened ;  blunderbusses  and  other  busses  given  and  taken; 
officers  beaten  up  from  behind  ploughshares  to  be 
beaten  in  first  skirmishes  into  good  leaders ;  and 
shields  from  all  the  free  States  were  clasped  around 
the  waist  of  the  capital.  Never  were  there  so  many 
gun-holders,  nor  so  few  office-seekers,  at  Washington 
in  the  month  of  April. 

The  soft  velveted  hand  which  caressed  was  now 
stiffened  into  the  steel  gauntlet  to  smite. 

Mean  while  the  English  government,  employed  since 
1783  in  looking  across  at  us  through  the  large  end  of 
its  telescope,  suddenly  got  its  eye  at  the  other  extreme, 
and  discovered  the  monstrous  size  of  this  country,  the 
large  population,  and  unmanifested  pluck  of  the  nine 
somehow  seceded  States,  and,  to  her,  the  very  obvious 
absence  of  any  ties  or  mutual  necessity  between  two 
such  admirably  designed  single  nations.  This  was  the 
almost  unanimous  opinion,  too,  of  the  well-dressed 
classes ;  although  some  Bright  Englishmen,  and  espe- 
cially the  hard  toilers  in  the  manufacturing  districts,  — 
although  working  in  smoke,  —  saw  more  clearly  the 
object  and  design  as  well  as  the  final  end  of  the  com- 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  487 

mencing  difficulty  than  those  whose  near-sightedness 
spread  a  film  over  all  their  American  observations. 

"The  Hunited  States  'ave  too  many  people,"  said 
Lord  John. 

"  Haltogether,  yes,"  replied  Lord  Palmerston. 

"Suppose  that  they  should  fight?"  inquired  Lord 
John. 

"  Well,  two  heads  are  better  than  one,"  replied  the 
facetious  Palmerston. 

"And  so  are  two  customers,"  rejoined  Lord  John, 
wiping  his  nose  with  a  cotton  pocket-handkerchief. 

And  forthwith  they  issued  a  proclamation  of  neu- 
trality in  the  name  of  the  Queen,  whose  heart  was 
no  more  in  its  sentiments  than  her  hand  in  its  com- 
position. It  was  thought  at  the  time  by  many  people 
to  be  very  smart ;  and  so  it  was  very  smart,  altogether  too 
smart.  It  was  a  state  fiction,  —  a  fancy  creation,  looking 
in  legal  phrase  as  if  all  the  English  were  bent  on  rush- 
ing into  the  prophesied  something,  —  a  buffalo-hunt,  a 
Long  Island  race,  or  steamboat  explosion  ;  —  for  what 
the  little  flurry  was  about,  or  would  be  when  the 
solemn  state  warning  was  given,  no  one  knew, — 
unless  they  were  violently  restrained  by  the  British 
government.  It  was  the  unnecessarily  vehement  dec- 
laration of  the  very  disinterested  old  maid  to  the  un- 
suspecting, quiet  young  man,  quite  innocent  of  such 
audacious  thoughts  as  her  fears  excited  and  suggested : 
"  Now,  if  you  kiss  me  I  shall  resist.  I  shall.  Don't 
you  try  it.  Now,  there,  don't  come  towards  me. 
Don't  make  such  a  noise,  for  everybody  will  hear 
you.  Hands  off.  Don't  try  it.  I  shall  scream. 
Quit  now.  Don't  disturb  the  neighborhood.  Hands 


488    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

off,  I  tell  you.  I  won't  have  anything  to  do  with  it." 
The  warning  was  as  piquant  and  promotive  of  the 
practice  deprecated,  as  the  landlord's  to  the  ostler, 
never  to  grease  the  teeth  of  traveller's  horses,  for  if  he 
should  they  could  not  eat  oats. 

The  strikers  in  Arkansas  and  North  Carolina,  in 
May,  contrived  somehow  to  get  up  delegates  to  meet 
those  from  the  other  Southern  States  at  Richmond, 
the  newly  selected  gathering-place  of  Confederated 
counsellers. 

The  insurrection  commenced  to  grow.  The  warned 
boy  began  seriously  to  think  of  the  audacity  from 
which  he  was  so  solemnly  conjured  to  desist. 

Federal  war  stores,  magazines,  and  naval  materials 
were  handed  over  to  the  new  State  claimants  by  their 
loose- wristed  custodians,  who,  although  educated  by  the 
Federal  government,  generously  gave  away  her  property 
on  the  principle  of  that  testator,  who  requested  his 
own  debtors,  forthwith  after  his  decease,  to  pay  what 
they  owed  to  his  executors,  and  nobly  forgave  his 
creditors  the  debts  which  he  owed  them.  Floydism 
became  as  fashionable  South  as  cotton,  butternut- 
colored  clothing  and  long  hair.  Just  as  the  tree  was 
bent  the  Twiggs  inclined.  At  Little  Rock,  Pensacola, 
Portsmouth,  Virginia,  and  in  Texas,  large  masses  of 
stores,  cannon,  guns,  and  naval  materials  were  trans- 
ferred, like  the  allegiance  of  the  officers  in  charge,  to 
the  strange  African  fetich.  It  looked  as  if  the  Ameri- 
can people  were  moving  out  of  the  lower  story  of  their 
large,  constitutional  bazaar  into  the  upper  lofts,  and 
were  giving  away  generously  a  part  of  the  expensive 
fixtures  to  the  new  incoming  tenant. 


THE   WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  489 

In  May  some  Confederate  cotton  curtains,  striped 
with  rough  military  lines,  were  hung  before  Washing- 
ton. They  concealed  much  real  weakness  and  want  of 
furniture  behind  them,  and  enabled  those,  who  kept  up 
a  confused  shouting  in  the  darkened  recesses  and  away 
from  the  front,  to  convey  an  impression  of  numbers 
which  did  not  exist. 

Thirteen  thousand  Federal  troops,  —  part  of  the 
seventy-five  thousand,  —  led  by  General  Mansfield,  de- 
siring to  get  a  nearer  view  of  the  curtain,  crossed  over 
the  Potomac  to  Arlington  Heights.  The  Virginia  soil,  it 
was  found,  no  more  spurned  Northern  feet  than  its  cul- 
tivation was  spurned  by  the  hands  of  its  white  owners. 
The  next  day  Colonel  Ellsworth,  with  a  Zouave  regi- 
ment, entered  the  ancient  town  of  Alexandria.  Seeing 
the  new  flag  swaying  in  its  sluggish  air,  he  tore  down, 
as  he  supposed,  the  fetich  symbol ;  but  received  almost 
on  the  instant  a  fatal  shot,  and  was  borne  away  with 
slow  requiems  to  the  vast  Northern  cemetery,  in  which 
new  graves  were  soon  rapidly  to  be  opened.  The 
struck  symbol  of  the  Confederacy  was  not  cut  down, 
but  only  lowered  to  half-mast,  emblem  of  American 
hopes  and  pride. 

May  9,  Mr.  Lincoln  made  a  new  call  for  forty-two 
thousand  men.  As  quickly  as  May  blossoms  come  to  the 
expected  call  of  the  shower  they  came  in  rosy-hearted 
responses.  General  Butler  hastened  with  twelve  thou- 
sand men  to  Fortress  Monroe,  whence  on  the  9th  of 
June  he  sent  a  detachment  to  Big  Bethel.  No  wres- 
tling-match, however,  came  off  there,  and  no  pillar  of 
stone,  of  course,  set  up.  Meanwhile,  Missouri,  Mary- 
land, and  Kentucky,  —  resisting  the  second  secession 
21* 


490     THE   COMIC    HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

cleavage,  started  by  Virginia,  and  which  had  drawn 
after  her  Tennessee,  Arkansas,  and  North  Carolina, — 
trembled  with  the  forces  contending  for  ascendency  in 
their  several  borders.  In  the  first  State,  General  Jack- 
son attempted  in  vain  to  mesmerize  Lyons.  Failing  in 
these  passes,  he  made  several  upward  strokes,  destroying 
railroads,  bridges,  and  telegraph  wires.  But  the  Fed- 
eral commander,  pursuing  him  to  Boonesville,  disabled 
his  arm  from  renewing  such  tricks.  Uniting  his  forces 
with  General  Sigel's,  —  making  from  their  junction 
six  thousand  men,  —  General  Lyons  attacked  at  Wil- 
son's Creek,  near  Springfield,  Ben  McCullough  and 
Sterling  Price,  with  a  force  of  twenty  thousand. 

The  attacking  party  was  repulsed,  and  its  brave 
leader  killed,  but  the  followers  of  the  Ranger  were  too 
weary  to  pursue  them. 

In  Virginia,  early  in  July,  General  George  B.  Mc- 
Clellan,  then  in  his  thirty-sixth  year,  and  General 
Eosecrans,  in  his  forty-second,  collecting  the  cream  of 
their  little  armies,  skimmed  the  Confederate  pans  at 
Rich  Mountain,  while  immediately  after,  the  Confeder- 
ate pails,  were  completely  upset  or  seized  by  General 
Morris,  assisted  by  some  help  from  Ohio  and  Indiana, 
at  Carrick's  Ford.  General  Rosecrans,  flowing  towards 
the  Southwest,  came  down  like  a  mountain  torrent 
in  the  Kanawha  valley,  even  flooding  such  water- 
logged estrays  as  Henry  A.  Wise  and  the  indicted 
Floyd.  The  salt  springs  of  the  valley,  towards  which 
they  sped,  could  not  preserve  them  from  becoming 
spoiled,  and  held  ever  afterward,  even  by  their 
friends,  in  bad  odor. 

A  few  days  afterwards,  the  troops  near  Washington, 


THE   WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND  MUSKETS.  491 

numbering  about  35,000  under  General  McDowell, 
were  moved  in  a  body  towards  the  curtain,  —  which 
was  drawn  back  and  back  by  its  supporters  to  Manassas 
Junction,  —  where  Beauregard,  intrenched  with  27,000 
men,  assisted  by  General  Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  16,000 
more  close  at  hand  in  Winchester,  steadied  and  up- 
held it.  As  the  35,000  thousand  went  forward,  the 
three  months'  men,  whose  time  had  expired,  went  back- 
ward, seeking  the  far  rear  to  the  sound  of  the  enemy's 
cannon,  until  the  Federal  inspecting  force  was  reduced 
to  18,000.  As  they  approached  that  historic  little  rill, 
Bull  Eun,  they  met  the  combined  forces  of  the  Confed- 
erates, and  after  holding  the  field  against  them  and 
even  advancing  upon  it,  until  late  in  the  afternoon, 
they  fell  into  one  of  those  panics,  not  unfrequent 
among  troops,  raw  or  seasoned,  in  which  the  wild  run 
of  frightened  bulls  or  the  disordered  summersaulting 
and  tumbles  of  a  herd  of  buffaloes  is  an  orderly 
march.  A  mass  of  huddling  soldiers,  civilians,  team- 
sters, members  of  Congress,  and  other  muddled  mate- 
rial was  thrown  upon  Washington.  The  puzzled  Con- 
federates, unconscious  of  victory  and  of  course  unpur- 
suing,  at  length  got  back  to  their  capital.  Discovering 
at  last  their  stupendous  victory,  they  made  up  for 
lost  time  by  shouts  so  loud  that  every  European  echo 
repeated  it,  like  a  very  Lurlei.  In  this  big  scare  were 
many  of  the  leading  generals  on  either  side,  —  among 
those  on  the  Federal,  Sherman,  Burnside,  and  Heint- 
zelman  ;  and  on  the  Confederate,  Longstreet,  Ewell, 
Early,  Bonham,  and  that  praying  soldier,  Stonewall 
Jackson,  then  thirty-five  years  old,  and  whose  saintly, 
fanatical  bravery  recalls  the  gallant  slaughterers  in  the 


492     THE  COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

civil  wars  of  Scotland,  who  tempered  their  prayers 
with  bayonet-pushing  amens,  and  ended  their  fervid 
hacking  of  enemies  with  hearty  thanksgivings  to 
Heaven. 

The  losses  on  either  side  in  men  were  nearly  bal- 
anced,—  the  Federal  dead  amounting  to  481,  and  the 
Confederate  to  378  ;  the  Federal  wounded  to  1011,  the 
Confederate  to  1489  ;  but  in  prestige,  self-respect,  and 
that  subtle  moral  force  which  cannot  be  weighed  even 
by  grains  or  scruples,  the  advantage  was  greatly  with 
the  insurrectionists. 

Congress  immediately  voted  to  raise  500,000  men 
for  the  army,  two  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  dollars 
in  money,  and  to  issue  fifty  millions  of  treasury-notes. 
The  Confederate  gathering  determined  to  set  400,000 
men  to  help  the  existing  210,000  hold  up  the  cotton 
veil,  now  becoming  so  heavy  and  thick  with  dust  and 
clots,  that  even  Mr.  Seward  began  to  doubt  whether  it 
could  be  lifted  in  thirty  days. 

In  August,  Forts  Hatteras  and  Clark  were  pulled 
by  Commodore  Stringham  into  Pamlico  Sound. 

For  many  months  the  country  in  front  of  Washing- 
ton was  converted  into  a  vast  drill-ground,  over  which 
Drill-Sergeant  McClellan  exercised  the  weary  feet  of 
over  one  hundred  thousand  soldiers,  and  the  wearier 
patience  of  many  millions  of  citizens.  During  this 
time  the  echoes  of  Bull  Eun,  as  numerous  and  diversi- 
fied as  an  Irishman's,  haunted  the  consciences  and 
journals  of  America,  and  the  hollow  faith  of  Europe. 
If  it  was  all  quiet  on  the  Potomac,  it  was  very  unquiet 
elsewhere.  General  McClellan  was  always  a  believer 
in  the  Italian  proverb, 


THE   WAR  OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  493 

"  Chi  va  piano. 
Va  sano  : 
Chi  va  forte, 
Va  alia  morte,'' 

and  so  he  held  his  ground  near  Washington. 

In  September,  a  series  of  severe  skirmishes,  lasting 
three  days,  between  General  Robert  E.  Lee,  now  fifty- 
three  years  old,  and  General  Reynolds,  at  Cheat  Moun- 
tain and  Elk  Water,  Virginia,  followed  by  another 
October  3d  at  Greenbrier,  disagreeably  shook  up  the 
Confederate  commander.  These  first  attempts  to  turn 
against  his  countrymen  the  science  and  skill  which  he 
had  gained  at  their  expense  and  in  their  service,  were 
creditable  to  his  conscience,  if  not  to  his  head  and 
skill. 

The  sleeper  turned  over  with  a  sense  of  smothering, 
as  in  Ms  nightmare  horror  he  saw  the  drawn  sword  of 
his  favorite  sons  pointed  at  him. 

On  the  29th  of  October  a  fleet  under  Commodore 
Du  Pont,  with  General  T.  W.  Sherman  and  twenty 
thousand  men  on  board,  sailed  for  Port  Royal,  and  after 
three  elliptical  turnings  in  the  harbor,  threw  out  such 
pills  as  they  passed  that  Forts  Walker  and  Beauregard, 
suddenly  swallowing  them,  fell  into  such  a  vertigo, 
that  they  lost  their  heads,  and  tumbled  helpless  upon 
the  ground.  To  balance  this  fatal  bill  of  mortality, 
however,  the  Confederate  General  Evans,  defeated  with 
great  loss  a  detachment  of  two  thousand  one  hundred 
men  under  General  Stone,  at  Ball's  Bluff,  when  Oregon 
lost  one  of  her  best  senators  and  citizens,  Colonel  E. 
D.  Baker. 

The  cotton  veil  was  becoming  very  soiled  and  flecked. 
November  brought  out  a  variety  of  colors  in  American 


494    THE    COMIC   HISTORY    OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

affairs,  some  light  with  yellow  hues,  others  as  dark  as 
the  gusty  season  loves  to  whirl  over  a  surface  ever 
freezing  and  thawing.  General  Scott  retired  from  the 
chief  command  of  the  army,  to  which  General  McClel- 
lan  succeeded ;  the  lean  Davis  was  made  high-priest 
for  six  years  to  the  Southern  fetich,  and  Mason  and 
Slidell,  Confederate  commissioners,  hurriedly  shunning 
Mr.  Welles  and  his  cruisers,  were  captured  by  Captain 
"Wilkes  off  the  Trent.  They  were  of  course  promptly 
spied  by  the  large,  vigilant  English  telescope,  which,  in 
its  rapid  shifting  for  the  occasion,  read  English  inter- 
national law  backwards,  and  spelled  out  our  duty  from 
our  own  precedents.  The  alacrity  with  which  their 
surrender  was  demanded  showed  that  the  still  anxious 
young  lady  had  survived  the  alarm,  caused  by  the  un- 
willing kiss  six  months  before,  and  was  desirous  to 
escape,  in  precisely  the  same  way,  any  further  imper- 
tinences. 

John  C.  Breckenridge  now  climbed  down  to  grasp 
the  depraved  prize  he  had  at  last  so  well  earned. 
Elected  a  Senator  of  the  United  States  at  the  close  of 
the  Vice-Presidency  in  the  preceding  March,  he  readily 
took  a  voluntary  oath  to  support  the  Constitution  of  an 
undivided  land ;  played  the  spy  upon  the  efforts  of  its 
government  to  thwart  the  attempts  to  dissever  it ; 
and  at  the  close  of  the  session,  unable  longer  to  profit 
by  his  office  and  oath,  took  a  brigadier's  commission 
and  a  new  oath  against  a  country  which  had  loaded  his 
family  and  himself  with  its  highest  honors.  Once  the 
cherished  type  of  a  chivalrous  gentleman,  he  engrafted 
upon  the  abused  name  of  chivalry  definitions  more  re- 
proachful than  those  which  spring  from  the  addled 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS   AND   MUSKETS.  495 

eccentricities  of  Don  Quixote ;  his  old  friends,  if  any 
such  survive,  must  long  have  desired  to  feel  that  he 
had  only  lost  an  arm  in  a  service  which,  undistin- 
guished by  any  advantage  brought  to  it  by  a  man  who 
had  deserted  everything  for  it,  sunk  the  remains  of  a 
character  once  high,  and  an  intellect  once  brilliant, 
to  a  depth  compared  with  which  history  refuses  an  ex- 
ample. Others  may  plead  some  excuse,  more  or  less 
admissible,  for  their  armed  heresies  :  Davis,  that  his 
was  a  logical  sequence  to  his  lifelong  convictions  of 
State  supremacy  ;  Toombs,  Cobb,  Stephens,  and  others, 
that  their  States  dragged  them  out ;  Floyd,  the  neces- 
sity of  putting  money  in  his  purse  ;  Wise,  the  loss  of  a 
guiding  intelligence.  But  to  not  one  of  these  can  John 
C.  Breckenridge  point  to  mitigate  the  just  severities  of 
that  moral  verdict  which,  in  cases  of  such  cumulated 
guilt,  can  only  appease  the  general  uneasiness  at  the 
exhibition  of  depravity  so  fathomless,  by  the  most  ex- 
emplary damages.  Looking  into  the  dreadful  chasms, 
down  which  his  example  cast  so  many  others ;  the 
maimed  cripples,  the  hollow-eyed  widows,  Justice  slain 
by  stabs  in  the  back,  exiles  from  poor  homes  smitten 
by  the  bludgeons  of  secret  agents,  even  humorous  His- 
tory grows  stern-featured  and  allows  a  saddening  pity 
to  cloud  her  habitual  smile,  as  she  flings  her  knotted 
whip  over  the  shoulders  of  high-born  guilt. 

As  the  year  1861  drew  towards  its  close,  the  war, 
dropping  in  the  old  traditional  path  of  empire,  trended 
westward  and  seated  itself  in  the  valley  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi. Ulysses  S.  Grant,  then  thirty-nine  years  old, 
newly  assigned  to  the  District  of  Cairo,  took  Paducah, 
Kentucky ;  and  settled  on  Belmont,  —  not  August,  the 


496    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

banker,  but  a  small  town  in  Missouri,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Mississippi,  opposite  Columbus,  Kentucky.  This  latter 
place  was  then  held  by  that  mitred  Spartan  warrior, 
Leonidas  Polk,  who  had  left  the  light  of  the  star  which 
guided  wise  men  to  the  Babe,  for  the  hazy  star  of 
the  major-general,  —  one  of  the  dim  twinklers  in  that 
milky-way  which,  after  four  years'  watering,  disap- 
peared from  the  sight  of  even  telescopic  gazers. 

Gradually  large  forces  were  drawn  to  the  State  of 
Kentucky,  —  nicely  balancing  on  neutral  ground, — 
while  her  reluctant  hand  was  coyly  withdrawn  from 
any  Union  by  her  guardian,  Governor  Magoffin,  and 
was  thereby  sought  with  greater  ardor  by  each  suitor. 
The  Confederates  offered  her  a  bridal  Pillow,  but  the 
Federals  sent  Ulysses,  that  wise  and  silent  Greek, 
whose  manly  deeds  soon  effectually  won  her  affections. 

Christmas  eve,  1861,  put  a  million  of  armed  men 
and  two  millions  of  diurnal  debt  into  the  long  stocking 
of  iron-ridden  America. 


DIVISION  SECOND. 
COTTON  MIXED.    JANUARY  1, 1862,  TO  JANUARY  1, 1864. 

The  Road  to  Peace.  —  Distance  thither  illustrated.  —  What  certain  Knights 
might  have  learned.  —  The  Difficulties  created  by  losing  Battles  in 
Kentucky,  Tennessee.  Missouri,  and  Arkansas  detailed.  —  What  Grant, 
Thomas,  Curtis,  and  others  did ;  and  what  Crittenden,  Zollicoffer,  etc  , 
had  done  unto  them.  —  Whistling  in  the  Woods.  —  Wonderful  Story- 
telling Powers  of  J.  Davis. —  How  he  repeated  Tales  with  charming 
Variation.  —  A  Sea  Story  in  which  Iron  enters.  —  Farragut  and  Porter 
up  the  Mississippi. —  Received  at  New  Orleans  with  Illuminations  and 
Bonfires.  —  Butler  deals  with  effervescing  Materials.  —  The  Peninsular 
Campaign  traced.  —  Spading  and  Fighting.  —  The  Glories  and  Disas- 
ters of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  —  The  American  Pope  fallible.  — 
Lee's  Trip  into  Maryland. — Accidents  at  South  Mountain  and  An- 


THE   WAR  OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  497 

tietam.  —  Difficult  Questions  besiege  Mr.  Lincoln  in  Washington.  — 
His  New- Year's  Gift  to  the  Slaves.  —  Getting  rich  on  Paper.  —  Cotton 
mixed.  —  A  Depraved  Currency.  —  Hooker  gets  at  Lee's  Rear  at  Chan- 
cellorsville.  —  What  followed.  —  Lee  at  Gettysburg;  gets  the  Advertis- 
ing its  Springs  want.  —  The  Sorrows  of  Vicksburg,  July  4, 1863.  —  The 
Mississippi  open.  —  Mortar-boat  Building.  —  Valor  of  Colored  Regi- 
ments at  Charleston;  and  of  discolored  Irish  in  New  York.  —  Con- 
trasts. —  Grant  Transfigured  at  Missionary  Ridge  and  Look-Out  Moun- 
tain without  Bragging  of  it. 

"  How  far  is  it,  my  boy,  by  this  road  to  Drains- 
ville  ? "  asked  a  mud-spattered  traveller  of  a  shrewd 
lad  by  the  roadside.  "  If  you  keep  on  the  way  that 
you  are  heading,"  replied  the  boy,  "and  can  man- 
age the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  on  horseback,  it  is  23,999 
miles ;  if  you  turn  your  horse's  head  and  go  right  back 
it  is  one  mile." 

Such  were  the  comparative  distances  which  the  Eques- 
trian Knights  of  the  Woolly  Order — had  they  inquired 
on  New- Year's  morning,  1862  —  would  have  found 
parted  them  from  that  desirable  end  of  their  weary  jour- 
ney, the  pleasant  village  of  Peace.  Looking,  however, 
only  at  the  delusive  finger-boards  which  cottonized 
brains  had  set  up  along  that  way ;  singing  jaunty  songs 
of  Southern  superiority  and  Northern  low-down  man- 
ners ;  and  listening  to  a  confused  distant  cheer,  occasion- 
ally borne  to  them  by  certain  winds  out  of  the  North  and 
by  easterly  breezes  from  Europe,  they  rode  on,  fancying 
that  they  would  soon  dismount  at  their  journey's  end, 
give  their  splashed  animals  into  the  accustomed  charge 
of  the  old  faithful,  colored  ostlers,  and  set  down  to  the 
old  dishes  of  glorious  hominy  and  glorifying  homily. 
Instead,  however,  of  this  experience,  they  met  inter- 
minable difficulties, —  Generals  Crittenden  and  Zollicof- 
fer,  jostled  out  of  saddle  by  General  Thomas  at  Mill 


498    THE   COMIC  HISTORY  OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Spring,  and  floundering  badly  through  Kentucky  into 
Tennessee ;  another  set  captured  at  and  with  Fort 
Henry,  Feburary  6th,  by  Flag-Officer  Foote,  whose  flo- 
tilla kept  on,  as  if  little  conscious  of  its  impertinent 
doings,  up  the  Tennessee  Kiver  as  far  as  Florence,  with 
encouraging  shouts  from  loyal  throats  on  either  bank ; 
Fort  Douelson  so  surrendered  to  the  silent-lipped  Grant, 
Feburary  16th,  and  its  twelve  thousand  men  and  forty 
pieces  of  cannon  so  thoroughly  taken  up  by  him  as  to 
furnish  no  stopping-place  for  the  tired  party  ;  Missouri, 
constipated  under  the  empiric  treatment  of  Van  Dorn 
and  Price,  and  evacuated  under  the  drastic  prescrip- 
tions of  General  Curtis,  too  weak  to  entertain  the  travel- 
lers ;  Pea  Ridge,  Arkansas,  so  shelled  out  by  the  Union 
pickers  March  6,  7,  and  8,  1862,  that  Ben  McCuUough 
and  numerous  rangers  had  gone  into  dead  silences 
when  called  upon  for  help ;  New  Madrid  given  up  with 
six  thousand  butternut-colored  troops  to  the  constrain- 
ing faith  in  the  American  Pope ;  Shiloh  delivered  in 
April  to  the  armed  Emanuel  of  Union  expectations ; 
Island  Number  Ten,  in  the  Mississippi,  with  its  seven 
thousand  hosts  and  vast  supplies,  taken  possession  of 
April  7th,  so  as  to  afford  no  shelter  to  the  equestrians ; 
the  restoration  of  all  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  back 
into  the  soft  bands  of  the  Union ;  the  destruction  of  the 
Confederate  flotilla  in  Albemarle  Sound,  and  the  taking 
of  Eoanoke  Island,  Forts  Macon  and  Pulaski,  —  these 
unexpected  incidents,  as  they  advanced  on  the  long  trip, 
were  rude  shocks  to  the  sight,  the  comfort,  and  the 
spirits  of  the  hard- whistling  equestrians.  Whistle  how- 
ever they  did  and  must,  to  keep  up  their  courage  through 
the  gloomy  woods,  while  to  stimulate  the  flagging  tern- 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND  MUSKETS.  499 

pers  of  some  of  the  riders,  the  leading  horseman,  Davis, 
told  them  in  a  high  voice  —  loud  enough  to  be  heard 
all  over  Europe  —  some  very  exciting  stories  about 
Northern  atrocities,  made-up  tales  that  beat  everything 
in  the  way  of  romance  since  the  Scottish  Chiefs  and 
Thaddeus  of  Warsaw.  These  stories  always  seemed  to 
entertain  the  hard-travelling  party,  who  frequently 
called  upon  him  to  repeat  them,  which  he  did  with 
some  charmingly  horrible  variations. 

Suddenly,  however,  on  the  8th  of  March,  a  novel 
sight  greeted  the  eyes  of  all  in  Hampton  Roads.  The 
steam-frigate  Merrimac,  raised  from  her  salty  bed  near 
Portsmouth,  receiving  a  new  coat  of  mail,  an  ugly  look- 
ing iron  rhinoceros-shaped  snout/and  the  soft,  new  pet 
name  of  Virginia,  rolled  out  in  ungainly  strength  into 
the  wide  bay ;  and  commenced  goring  the  Federal  herd 
of  wooden  frigates,  fatally  ripping  up  the  Cumberland 
and  Congress,  and  cruelly  gashing  the  St.  Lawrence 
and  Roanoke.  Unhurt  herself,  her  scaly  armor  un- 
dented, she  slunk  back  gorged  to  her  lair,  prepared  for 
a  more  savage  repast  on  the  rest  of  the  frightened  gun- 
boats and  ships  on  the  following  morning ;  when  lo  ! 
on  the  morrow,  tumbling  out  for  her  cruel  pastime,  she 
met  the  little,  pert,  saucy  Monitor,  one  fifth  her  size 
only,  and  also  clothed  in  steel,  which  stepped  up  close 
by  her  side  and  delivered  two  unexpected,  round  mes- 
sages, each  weighing  one  hundred  and  sixty-eight 
pounds.  Indignant  at  this  interference  with  her  in- 
tended lunch,  the  masculine  Virginia  commenced  fling- 
ing iron  bolts  and  round  indignities,  but  the  pert  little 
thing  hurled  heavier  blows  back.  The  Virginia  then 
punched  her  five  times  with  her  indignant  snout ;  but 


500      THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED  STATES. 


THE   WAR   OF   IDEAS   AND   MUSKETS.  501 

the  wee  one  only  laughed  at  her  impotent  raillery,  and 
pitched  back  at  her  such  crashing  logic,  that  she  rolled 
back  again  with  her  maw  wholly  unsated.  On  the 
part  of  the  Monitor  it  was  a  Word-en-a  blow.  The 
well-hammered  arguments,  taught  by  the  new  system 
of  military  logic,  carried  alarming  weight  wherever 
maritime  questions  are  chopped. 

Farragut  and  Porter  soon  after  got  up  a  yachting 
party,  consisting  of  forty-five  vessels,  to  cruise  through 
the  Gulf  and  up  to  New  Orleans.  Forty  miles  up 
from  the  river's  mouth  they  encountered  Forts  Philip 
and  Jackson,  great  chains,  anchored  hulks,  and  batter- 
ies, from  which  came  very  loud  talk,  and  earnest  pro- 
testations against  any  farther  proceeding  on  the  part 
of  the  yachtsmen.  At  length,  however,  by  cutting 
the  chain,  the  entire  party,  except  two,  pushed  through 
in  a  terrible  iron  hail-storm,  and  reached  the  Crescent 
City,  where  they  were  received  with  terrific  demon- 
strations, bonfires  of  fifteen  thousand  bales  of  cotton, 
illuminated  blockade-runners,  shipping,  sugar,  turpen- 
tine, molasses,  and  other  loose-lying  combustibles. 

Such  an  incendiary  place  had  to  be  well  secured; 

and  on  the  1st  of  May  it  was  put  into  the  firm  charge 

of  the  Union  Butler,  who  occasionally  uncorked  its 

riotous  effervescence,  and  bottled  up  some  of  the  more 

.fermenting  qualities. 

Meanwhile  the  long  waiting  public  called  for  the 
fine  drilling  party  in  front  of  Washington,  numbering 
nearly  two  hundred  thousand,  faithfully  schooled  for 
eight  months,  to  take  the  intensely  desired  trip  to 
Eichmond.  Early  in  April,  headed  by  General  Mc- 
Clellan,  it  reached  the  old  Kevolutionary  camping- 


502    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

ground  at  Yorktown.  Although,  in  fact,  only  five 
thousand  Confederates  were  stationed  there,  the  Fed- 
eral leader  suspected  traps  ahead,  and  so  went  for  a 
month  to  vigorous  spading,  road-making,  and  mining, 
resuming  in  this  way  his  early  occupations  and  tastes. 
These  gratified,  and  no  traps  found,  the  army  began  on 
the  3d  of  May  to  move  towards  the  Chickahominy,  — 
a  sluggish,  soupy  stream,  thickened  by  swamp  muds 
and  miasma,  —  which  was  reached  May  20th  and 
crossed.  There  was  now  more  spading,  and  in  sight 
of  the  Eichmond  spires. 

For  six  weeks,  alas !  the  spade  was  busy,  not  for 
the  living  only,  through  this  Golgotha  of  the  war ;  for 
now  commenced  a  series  of  death-dealing  combats  sel- 
dom equalled  in  our  well-mounded  planet :  May  27th 
the  battle  of  Hanover  Court-House,  the  Confederates 
losing ;  followed  by  four  days  of  severe  skirmishes ; 
succeeded  by  the  gigantic  struggle  of  forty-eight  un- 
ceasing hours  of  death-heaping  on  both  sides,  at 
Fair  Oaks  Station,  between  the  corps  of  Sumner, 
Heintzelman,  Kearny,  and  Hooker,  on  one  side,  and 
Joseph  E.  Johnston,  the  Confederate  commander,  Long- 
street,  and  the  two  Hills,  on  the  other ;  then  three 
weeks  of  intrenching,  sickness,  and  decimation;  and 
then  on  the  25th  of  June,  the  retreat  to  the  James, 
crowded  with  six  days  of  ceaseless  combats,  embroid- 
ering  in  gloriously  ensanguined  characters  on  the 
shredding  flag  of  the  Potomac  the  well-fought  but 
disastrous  battles  of  Mechanicsville,  Gaines's  Mills, 
Savage's  Station,  White-Oak  Swamp,  and  Malvern 
Hill,  in  which  fifteen  thousand  Union  lives  were 
spent. 


THE   WAR   OF   IDEAS   AND   MUSKETS.  503 

General  Lee  was  placed  in  command  of  the  Confed- 
erates in  the  place  of  General  Johnston,  wounded  at 
Fair  Oaks  ;  and  General  Halleck  displaced  General  Mc- 
Clellan,  wounded  before  he  left  Washington  in  his 
military  reputation,  and,  though  unhurt  bodily,  more 
severely  injured  by  his  Peninsular  campaign. 

General  Pope  was  assigned  to  the  head  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  but  showed  in  fifteen  days  of  fighting 
along  the  Eappahannock  that,  like  another  Pope  on 
the  Tiber,  he  was  not  at  all  infallible. 

In  September  General  Lee  took  a  trip  into  Mary- 
land, which  he  hoped  to  extend  to  Philadelphia.  He 
was,  however,  followed  by  General  McUlellan,  rein- 
stated to  the  leadership  of  his  old  army.  Their  meet- 
ings at  South  Mountain  and  Antietam  swept  thirty 
thousand  Confederates  under  ground  or  into  hospitals, 
largely  counterbalancing  the  Peninsular  losses. 

Cotton  had  become  very  mixed,  and  its  skeins  tan- 
gled and  knotted. 

Difficult  and  dark  questions  now  travelled  to  Wash- 
ington, and  closely  besieged  Mr.  Lincoln.  Calmly,  pa- 
tiently, and  good-humoredly  he  sat  down  with  them 
in  a  conference  to  which  his  own  good  sense  and  large- 
hearted  wisdom  were  invited.  The  result  was  that  on 
New- Year's  day,  1863,  free  papers  were  plumped  into 
the  lean,  slave  stockings  throughout  all  the  somehow 
seceded  States. 

During  this  period  history  and  paper  money  were 
both  made  in  large  quantities  ;  and  the  paper  business 
became  very  lucrative.  We  were  getting  rich  very 
fast  after  the  European  fashion.  In  the  midst  of  the 
armed  clash,  however,  a  very  Pacific  act  was  com- 


504    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

mitted,  —  the  passage  in  July,  1862,  of  the  Pacific  Rail- 
road charter,  which  gave  one  hundred  millions  of  rea- 
sons why  the  Union  could  not  be  broken.  So  far  from 
giving  up  the  Soiith,  Congress  provided  for  making 
Japan  and  China  American  dependencies ;  reaching 
out  with  steel  fingers  for  their  teas,  silks,  and  almond- 
eyed  live  productions. 

The  year  1863  dawned  cheerfully  upon  the  hitherto 
sombre  whites  North,  as  well  as  upon  the  more  sombre 
sable  loyalists  at  the  South.  Blockades  on  the  coast ,  a 
currency  as  depraved  as  Breckenridge ;  railroads  undu- 
lating as  saws,  over  which  phthisicy  engines  groaned, 
as  they  drew  the  ever-lessening  transportation ;  and  a 
population  rapidly  sieved  by  repeated  drafts,  signalled 
the  ravages  to  which  the  Confederacy  was  subjected, 
and  its  lessening  means  constantly  clipped  and  pared 
away.  The  curious  stories  of  Mr.  Davis  had  neither 
wrought  a  faith  beyond  his  own  equestrian  escort,  nor 
drawn  any  recognition  from  foreign  spectators. 

Little  was  done  through  the  winter  in  the  field. 

Early  in  May,  General  Hooker,  successor  to  Burn- 
side,  and  the  fifth  leader  of  the  Potomac  Army,  having 
gained  Lee's  rear  at  Chancellorsville,  kicked  it  severely 
for  three  hot  days ;  but  was  in  turn  kicked  roundly. 
Each  army  lost  about  sixteen  thousand  men,  —  losses 
which,  if  united,  would  equal  the  entire  number  of  the 
American  troops  engaged  in  the  four  principal  battles 
of  the  Revolution,  —  Bunker  Hill,  Princeton,  Saratoga, 
and  Yorktown.  While  this  prolonged  fight  was  going 
forward,  Stoneman  and  Kilpatrick  showed  some  astound- 
ing feats  of  horsemanship,  in  swinging  around  Fred- 
ericksburg  and  Richmond;  cutting  the  Confederate 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS   AND   MUSKETS.  505 

lines  with  such  nimble  swords  that  it  delighted  an 
enthusiastic  audience. 

In  June,  Lee,  masking  large  designs  on  Washington, 
Baltimore,  and  Philadelphia,  crossed  the  Potomac  and 
showed  his  own  face  with  uncounted  others  at  Gettys- 
burg in  Pennsylvania,  where,  for  the  first  three  days  in 
July,  he  was  so  handled  by  Meade,  that  he  left  30,000 
dead  and  wounded,  14,000  prisoners,  and  27,000  stand 
of  arms,  to  add  attractions,  that  need  no  special  adver- 
tising to  Springs  that  receive  so  much. 

The  next  day,  July  4,  Vicksburg,  fruitlessly  assailed 
during  1862,  and  beleagured  from  May  4,  1863,  by 
the  reticent,  self-contained,  ever-pounding,  never-com- 
pounding Grant,  —  who  had  inextricably  tangled  it  by 
parallels  and  lines  unparalleled,  —  surrendered  its  army 
of  30,000  men,  70,000  small  arms,  200  cannon,  with- 
out reckoning  those  dangerous  edge-tools,  for  the  use 
of  which  its  desperate  gamblers  had  so  long  been 
famous.  Fortunately  the  surrender  came  too  late  to 
be  abused  by  the  orators  of  that  patient  and  long- 
suffering  day. 

The  Mississippi  River  once  more  bore  all  its  pipes 
in  peace.  The  mortar-boat  masons,  clearing  away  the 
ruins  which  the  strikers  had  caused,  had  prepared 
anew  the  foundations  for  the  prosperity  of  that  noble 
valley,  whose  exuberant  wealth  is  hereafter  to  be  rolled 
adown  it  by  unshackled  hands. 

While  the  troops  were  absent  from  New  York,  repel- 
ling Lee's  invasion  of  Pennsylvania,  and  the  black  regi- 
ments before  Charleston  were  assisting  Gilmore  to 
execute  the  stern  Federal  judgment  upon  that  place, 
the  anti-war  Irish  in  New  York,  largely  left  away 
22 


506    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

from  the  front  by  their  own  consent,  gained  the 
peaceful  rear  of  the  native-born  colored  men,  women, 
and  children  of  that  city,  and  took  a  safe  hand  in  the 
only  kind  of  contest  which  they  coveted.  The  valor 
which  for  three  days  they  displayed,  in  destroying 
property  wholly  unowned,  of  course,  by  themselves, 
in  chasing  and  hanging  colored  people,  and  in  robbing 
all  who  had  watches  or  purses  to  furnish  lines  for 
their  avaricious  bravery  to  attack,  was,  by  a  few, 
almost  as  much  admired  as  the  heroic  courage  of  the 
regiments  before  Charleston. 

At  Chattanooga,  Grant,  in  the  latter  part  of  Novem- 
ber, by  a  heaven-touching  struggle  of  three  days,  drove 
away  the  Confederate  forces  out  of  the  cloud-hidden 
heights  of  Missionary  Eidge  and  Lookout  Mountain. 
From  this  Tabor  he  himself  came  down,  but  not  to 
Bragg  of  the  transfiguration  there. 

All  now  admitted  that  cotton  was  very  mixed  and 
seedy. 

DIVISION  THIRD. 

COTTON  WORSTED.    JANUARY  1, 1864,  TO  APRIL  14, 1865. 

What  the  Confederate  Stool  — not  of  Repentance,  but  of  Mars  — stood  on, 
and  how  braced  and  steadied.  —  The  Daisies  and  Corn-blooms  beneath 
it.  —  The  broken  Industries,  harried  Life,  and  disrupted  Ties  of  Union- 
ists in  the  Border  States.  —  Tragedies.  —  Grant  Commander-in-Chief. 

—  His  Plan  to  break  up  the   Nightmare.  —  Work  ahead.  —  Jubal  E. 
Early  and  his  Raids.  — The  Year  of  Jubal  E.  — Sherman  at  Atlanta. 

—  The  Southern  Knob  seized,  and  the  main  Door  burst  open.  —  An  un- 
protecting  Hood;  how  it  was  pounded  and  cleft  —  Sherman's  Swath 
through  Georgia,  —  A  Christmas  Gift  to  Mr.  Lincoln  of  a  Sheaf.  — 
The  Scorpion  Alabama:  its  Hatching  out;  its  slimy,  wriggling  Course, 
and  sulphureous  End.  —  The  Iron  Jaws  of  Mobile  pried  open,  and  its 
Teeth  drawn.  —  Autumn  brands  at  the  North.  —  Tokens  of  the  coming 
Fall.— Andrew  Johnson  and  the  Goose.  — Grant  breaks  Things  at 

I 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  507 

Petersburg  and  disturbs  J.  Davis  in  Church  at  Richmond.  —  Flight  of 
the  Latter  with  corruptible  Treasures.  —  Negro  Troops  enter  Rich- 
mond. —  Light  Suggestions  thereupon.  —  A  Meeting  at  Appomattox 
Court-House.  —  Leaving  bloody  Instructions,  Lee  goes  to  College.  — 
J.  Davis  in  Court  and  his  Sentence.  —  A  Thunder-Clap  and  its  Victim. 
—  Death  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 

THE  Confederate  stool  —  not  of  repentance,  but 
the  iron  stool  of  grim  Mars  —  now  stood  on  three 
legs.  One  rested  on  Southern  Arkansas,  braced 
by  some  eighty  thousand  regular  soldiers ;  one  on 
Georgia,  propped  by  General  Johnston  and  a  large 
force,  drawing  their  supplies  from  the  corn-cribs  of 
that  empire  State  of  the  South ;  and  the  third  and 
strongest,  planted  on  the  Eapidan,  and  steadied  up  by 
the  well-sinewed  arm  of  General  Lee.  Between  these 
rude  legs,  however,  were  springing  already  along  the 
furrows  made  by  the  ploughshare  of  strife  the  sweet- 
eyed  daisies.  Corn  gathered  its  golden  blooms  out  of 
the  dreadful  phosphates  which  had  been  strewn  over 
so  many  fields. 

Yet  while  nature's  healings  were  already  anointing 
the  ragged  wounds  of  incisive  war,  over  other  and  wide 
districts  came  ills  which  almost  defied  the  bungling 
surgeries  and  irregular  apothecary  appliances  that  were 
wasted  upon  or  unwisely  aggravated  them.  In  these 
districts  predatory  bands  hovered  over  and  constantly 
lit  upon  disorganized  and  broken  industries,  as  crows 
cawingly  follow  a  disrupted  herd  of  buffaloes  or  swoop 
upon  the  wounded  which  fall  out  of  the  straggling 
march.  The  harryings  of  cattle  ;  the  plunder  of  farm- 
steads, of  bean-patches,  —  nursed  by  the  patient  labor  of 
suddenly  made  widows, —  and  even  of  houses  seemingly 
secure  from  their  proximity  to  villages ;  wayside  mur- 


508     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

ders  from  concealed  coverts ;  midnight  shots  at  men 
asleep  in  bed,  or  treacherously  called  out  on  pretended 
errands  of  charity,  and  hewn  down,  frayed  and  fretted 
the  lives  of  those  who  still  clung  to  the  Union  through- 
out the  Border  States.  There  were  daily  tragedies,  sad- 
der than  the  tinselled  shows  of  the  stage.  There  were 
masqueraders  who  danced  through  desultory  cruelties 
at  which  even  the  readers  of  novels,  languid  over  ordi- 
nary stories,  enkindle  into  activity  and  excitement,  and 
family  feuds  encrimsoning  their  way  into  living  sor- 
rows and  eventually  into  tales,  which  in  mercy  we 
call  fictions. 

The  winter  and  spring  of  1864  pendulated  with 
balanced  successes  and  reverses  to  either  combat- 
ant. 

In  March,  General  Grant  was  made  Commander-in- 
Chief,  and  immediately  set  on  foot  a  plan  to  wake  up 
the  uneasy  sleeper  and  free  him  from  the  nightmare. 
This  plan  was  to  start  simultaneously,  and  to  keep  in 
motion,  the  various  corps  of  the  Federal  army ;  Sher- 
man's one  hundred  thousand  at  Chattanooga  against 
Johnston's  army  in  Georgia ;  Banks's  and  Farragut's  in 
conjunction  against  Mobile ;  and  Grant  himself,  unit- 
ed with  Meade,  against  Lee  and  Richmond :  thus 
shredding,  at  the  same  time,  the  still  suspended  cotton 
curtain,  and  preventing  its  busy  stitchers  at  one  point 
from  assisting  those  making  repairs  at  another.  Meade 
crossed  the  Rapidan,  May  4th,  and  advanced  towards 
Richmond,  giving  Lee  a  very  lively  hunt  through  the 
Wilderness  for  a  month,  and  at  length  driving  him  over 
the  soupy  and  astonished  Chickahominy.  At  the  same 
time  Grant,  holding  his  spirited  team  well  in  hand, 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  509 

drove  tip  also  towards  the  Confederate  capital,  until  he 
halted  on  the  south  side  of  the  James. 

Soon  after,  in  order  to  divert  attention  from  that 
long-coveted  spot,  Richmond,  General  Jubal  E.  Early 
made  into  Maryland  a  raid,  which  he  repeated  in  July, 
but  from  which  he  was  sent  whirling  back  into  the 
Shenandoah  valley.  He  renewed  his  experiments 
again  in  September  and  October,  but  was  finally 
chased  out  by  Sheridan  and  his  centaurs,  who  seemed 
to  mount  the  wind,  and,  on  their  rapid  and  supperless 
rides  to  live  off  condensed  night  air. 

Along  the  hyperborean  lines  rang  the  warning  after 
the  discomfited  Confederate  :  — 

"  The  year  of  Jubal  E.  is  come, 
Return,  ye  wandering  sinners,  home." 

In  the  Southeast,  Sherman,  flanking  Johnston  at 
Dalton  in  Georgia,  forced  him  through  May  and  June 
southwards,  delivering  battles  and  defeats,  —  which 
were  not  ordered,  —  at  Resaca,  Dallas,  Pine  Lost,  and 
Kenesaw  Mountains,  until  at  last  he  shoved  him  be- 
hind the  great  southern  knob,  Atlanta,  whose  con- 
verging iron  lines  held  the  main  door  of  the  Lower 
Confederacy.  Here  Johnston  disappeared,  and  the 
Confederate  powers  put  a  Hood  over  the  head  of 
the  assailed  Southeast ;  but  all  in  vain.  Sherman, 
pounding  about  the  iron-covered  Hood  with  heavy 
blows  through  July  and  August,  cleft  the  head-piece 
in  two ;  and  on  the  2d  of  September  cast  him  out, 
and,  seizing  the  great  iron  knob,  opened  wide  the  door. 

On  the  15th  of  November  Sherman  advanced 
through  Georgia  to  the  sea,  taking  a  swath  sixty 
miles  wide,  rolling  up  winrows  at  Milledgeville,  cut- 


510    THE   COiOC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

ting  down  thistles,  burdocks,  and  noxious  weeds  with 
his  well-whetted  scythe,  until,  on  the  21st  of  Decem- 
ber, he  reached  the  farther  side  of  his  great  hay-field 
at  Savannah.  Gathering  its  crop  into  one  bundle,  he 
despatched  it  to  Mr.  Lincoln  with  this  epistle  :  "  I  beg 
to  present  you,  as  a  Christmas  gift,  the  city  of  Savan- 
nah, with  one  hundred  and  fifty  guns,  plenty  of  am- 
munition, and  also  about  twenty-five  thousand  bales  of 
cotton."  Truly  cotton  now  had  become  very  worsted. 

In  June,  that  British  scorpion,  the  Alabama,  —  which 
had  been  hatched  out  at  Liverpool  in  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1862,  while  the  British  telescope  was 
steadily  turned  in  another  direction,  and  which  for 
two  years  had  left  its  red  slime  all  over  the  seas,  sting- 
ing to  death,  as  it  wriggled  in  its  venomous  course, 
sixty-four  peaceful  American  vessels, — was,  by  a  single 
blow  from  the  Kearsarge,  sent  to  a  sulphureous  grave  in 
the  Channel  which  washed  its  birthplace.  Diplomatic 
naturalists  have  ever  since  been  disputing  over  the 
species  and  quality  of  this  reptile ;  while  all  agree, 
that,  whether  warm  blooded  or  cold,  it  is  not  desirable 
that  its  kind  be  perpetuated.  Its  poisonous  carcass  is 
still  coiled  in  offensive  knots  around  the  international 
diplomatic  lattice-work  of  the  two  nations. 

During  August,  Admiral  Farragut  pried  open  the 
iron-set  jaws  of  Mobile  Harbor,  drawing  its  teeth,  — 
Forts  Morgan,  Gaines,  and  Powell,  —  real  molars  as 
they  were,  producing  spasms  which  threatened  lockjaw 
to  the  obstinate  patient. 

While  the  red  autumn  leaves  were  falling  through 
the  Xorth,  Confederate  hf^nds  were  whirled,  some  out 
of  Canada,  others  from  Northern  cities,  upon  the  bank 


THE  WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.  511 

of  St.  Alban's,  in  Vermont,  on  warehouses  in  Buffalo, 
Detroit,  and  New  York,  on  hotels  in  Cleveland,  and 
on  steamboats  on  the  Lakes.  The  real  sap  in  the 
Davis  tree  was  now  running  down,  and  the  top 
branches  were  shedding  their  crimson  colors  earth- 
ward. 

While  these  paling  evidences  of  the  fall  were  multi- 
plying, Mr.  Lincoln  was  re-elected  President,  by  two 
hundred  and  twelve  votes  out  of  two  hundred  and 
thirty-three.  Andrew  Johnson,  then  fifty-six  years 
old,  who  had  both  early  and  late  in  life  handled  the 
goose,  —  the  one  kind  as  acceptably  as  the  other,  — 
and  had  been  himself  cruelly  plucked  through  the  war 
by  the  masked  plunderers  in  Tennessee,  was  placed  in 
the  easy  nest  of  the  Vice-Presidency.  His  first  get- 
ting in  was  so  awkward,  that  it  was  manifest  some- 
thing had  turned  his  head. 

Sherman,  taking  breath  at  Savannah,  again  swung 
his  effective  scythe  through  the  thin  crop,- lying  be- 
tween that  city  and  Charleston,  which  was  cut  down, 
like  a  rank  burdock,  February  18,  1865.  Then  turn- 
ing northwards,  he  gathered  in  Columbia,  the  capital 
of  South  Carolina ;  turned  up  to  the  sunlight  dank 
villages,  all  unused  to  Northern  implements,  —  cheered 
as  he  went  by  sable  faces,  —  until  at  last  he  halted  at 
Fayetteville,  March  11,  1865,  to  take  a  hearty  shake 
of  the  hand  with  his  fellow-mowers,  General  Terry 
and  Admiral  Porter.  From  Wilmington,  he  again  whet- 
ted up  his  keen  blade  and  cleared  the  Southern  field. 
Johnston,  Beauregard,  Bragg,  and  Hardee  manifested  a 
disposition  to  stop  him  at  Be^onville  ;  but  a  blow  sent 
them  reeling -from  his  path,  and  he  went  vigorously  for- 


512     THE  COMIC  H1STOKY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


THE   WAR  OF  IDEAS  AND   MUSKETS.,  513 

ward,  garnering  blessed  harvests  for  his  country  and 
himself. 

Meanwhile  Grant,  through  the  autumn  of  1864,  was 
encompassing  Petersburg  and  drawing  zigzag  lines 
around  it,  that  were  too  much  like  tMe*  short  epistles 
that  creditors  send  to  unwilling  debtdrs,  to  be  agreea- 
ble. The  autumn  leaves  here  fell  on  busy  workers ; 
and  among  the  busiest,  the  Silent  Man,  who  was  cast- 
ing up  long  accounts  in  his  head,  which  only  opened 
to  let  out  smoke.  In  him,  however,  there  was  much 
fire,  American  and  Greek. 

On  the  24th  of  March,  the  Silent  Man  issued  an 
order  for  a  centripetal  movement  on  Eichmond.  Lee, 
in  every  way  tried  to  break  the  converging  fate. 
Along  the  Appomattox  Kiver,  at  Fort  Stedman,  and 
at  every  weak-looking  place,  he  hurled  himself 
against  the  links  of  a  chain,  now  slowly  drawing 
around  him ;  but  all  to  no  purpose.  On  the  2d  of 
April  Grant  broke  through  Lee's  intrenched  lines 
about  Petersburg ;  and  Lee  at  once  disturbed  J.  Davis, 
although  at  church  in  Eichmond,  by  a  sudden  notice 
that  Petersburg  and  Eichmond  were  insecure  places, 
arid  that  he  must  flee  to  other  refuges,  than  his  old 
ones.  Neither  sitting  nor  lying  would  now  do ;  and 
accordingly  the  head  of  the  Confederacy  took  to  his 
feet,  and  fled  with  the  few  depraved  treasures  which 
had  not  gone  already  to  corruption.  Hurrying  through 
Eichmond,  he  got  away  as  fast  as  a  very  un-express 
train  would  carry  him,  over  railroads  hacked  by  Sheri- 
dan, Stoneman,  and  Grierson.  The  next  morning 
General  Weitzel  entered  the  capital  of  the  dissolving 
Confederacy  —  so  long  held  by  brave  men  —  with  a 
22*  GG 


514    THE  COMIC   HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

body  of  colored  troops,  —  representatives  of  that  fate 
which  four  years  before  had  been  ignorantly  invoked, 
and  now  rapidly  fulfilling,  —  representatives,  too,  of 
those  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  others,  with 
skins  colored  like  their  own,  who  had  given  themselves 
to  the  service  of  a  Union,  whose  stripes  they  had  often 
felt,  and  whose  stars  for  them  had  just  peeped  above 
the  eastern  hills  and  were  beginning  to  sing  for  joy. 

Lee  at  once  commenced  a  retreat  towards  the  South- 
west, hoping  to  unite  his  broken  forces  with  Johnston, 
who,  however,  was  too  actively  taken  up  by  Sherman 
to  reciprocate  his  intentions.  At  Amelia  Court-House 
Sheridan  and  his  centaurs  suddenly  appeared  before 
the  astonished  Confederates  on  the  6th  of  April,  and 
cut  seven  thousand  a\yay  from  them.  The  remainder 
General  Lee  dragged  forward  to  Appomattox  Court- 
House,  and  there  delivered  them  over  to  the  generous 
justice  of  his  brother-in-arms,  the  silent-lipped,  whose 
magnanimity  was  a  fit  type  of  the  large  forbearance 
of  a  country,  which,  wronged  by  a  causeless  war,  — 
generated  for  ends  that  in  other  lands  would  have 
brought  its  authors  to  the  place  where  all  ropes  termi- 
nate, —  has  to  look  back  on  no  crosses,  but  for  itself. 

A  really  fine  character,  a  great  strategist,  and  per- 
sonally brave  man,  the  chief  of  the  Confederate  Army, 
who  had  delivered  such  "  bloody  instructions  "  to  the 
fathers,  became  the  head  of  a  college,  and  deals  out, 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  better  lessons  to  the  sons. 

This  surrender  was  followed,  on  the  26th  of  April 
by  that  of  Johnston ;  on  the  4th  of  May,  by  the  re- 
maining Confederate  forces  under  General  Dick  Taylor ; 
by  the  miscellaneous  taldng  of  Mobile,  Selma,  Tus- 


THE   WAR   OF  IDEAS  AND  MUSKETS.  515 

caloosa,  and  Montgomery,  and  the  unfortunate  capture 
of  Mr.  J.  Davis,  whose  lean  head  —  made  valuable  to 
his  captors  by  a  useless  expense  to  the  treasury  — 
was,  at  an  additional  expense,  taken  several  times 
to  Richmond,  and  shown  to  the  court  in  satisfaction 
of  his  bail  bond,  and  at  last  dismissed  —  to  the  gibbet 
of  history. 

The  black  cloud,  charged  with  such  thunderous  bolts, 
had  dissolved,  and  the  blue  sky  was  showing  through 
the  rifted  masses,  when  a  sudden  clap,  a  hissing  sound, 
a  sharp  wrenching  cry,  and  there  lay  the  straightened 
form  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  victories  which  he  had  helped  to  organize  were 
forgotten ;  cotton  worsted  was  unheeded ;  even  the 
terrible  struggles  with  the  long,  wrestling  nightmare, 
were  all  lost  sight  of  in  the  grief  for  the  Great  and  the 
Good,  whose  patriotism  had  warmed,  whose  integrity 
had  strengthened,  and  whose  genial  humor  had  kept 
warm  and  mellow,  the  heart  and  hope  of  a  brave  and 
self-sacrificing  nation  through  the  contest  just  closed, 
—  closed  to  open  upon  questions  which  had  need,  too, 
of  a  Solomon  rather  than  a  Jeroboam. 


CHAPTEE  XX. 

VELOCIPEDAL. 

How  mixed  Blood  effervesces.  —  Of  the  Causes  and  Developments  of 
American  Fastness.  —  Unrest  in  Prisons  and  at  Home.  —  Time  lost  in 
Sleep,  etc.  —  The  distressing  Hurry  of  Brains.  —  Compressing  a  Cow 
in  a  Milk-Pot.  —  Of  Doctors'  Gigs  and  Apoplectic  Whirligigs.  — 
American  Stomachs  considered.  —  A  general  Stomach;  how  employed 
and  hired  out.  —  Doctors'  Bills.  —  Clothes  Wringers  and  State  Wring- 
ers. — ''  Speedy  Trials  "  secured.  —  The  Common  and  Un-common 
Law  of  the  United  States  considered  at  length.  —  Of  Dower,  and  how 
taken.  —  Property  administered  before  Death.  —  Heirs  cheated.  —  In- 
junctions used.  —  Illinois  Divorces.  —  Of  Prohibited  Degrees  of  Mar- 
riage. —  Of  Fat  People  and  Servants. —  Boarding-Houses  and  Hotels.  — 
American  Trade  and  its  Feats  at  diminishing  Quantities.  —  Fast  Amer- 
icans in  Europe.  —  How  they  overcome  Distances,  History,  and  Land- 
lords. —  The  Paris  Genus. 

IF  "in   the   midst  of  life   we  are  in  debt,"   so  in 
the  midst  of  debt  Americans  are  always  lively. 
Mixed  blood  seems  to  discharge  rapidly  its  effervescing 
ingredients. 

Fastness,  except  in  the  colors  of  our  cheeks  and 
chintzes  and  in  the  movement  of  our  mails,  works 
its  curious  ways  through  all  manifestations  of  Ameri- 
can civilization.  Over  a  small,  old,  long-cultivated 
territory,  like  most  of  the  European,  life  moves  re- 
spectably alow,  careful  of  its  savings,  gathered  up  by 
centuries  of  work  and  put  out  at  low  rates  of  inter- 
est ;  across  continental  stretches  like  ours,  sweeping  in 
wide  districts  and  materials  of  unbundled,  aching 


VELOCIPEDAL.  517 

plenty,  it  hastens  with  panting  speed,  and  can  afford  to 
lose  everything  except  time.  Our  great  areas,  there- 
fore, make  us  lively,  their  vast  opportunities,  restless, 
wide-talking,  and  manifesting  the  generous  coarseness 
of  a  large-grained  breadth.  Out  of  these  alone  would 
come  marked  characteristics  ;  but  when  these  are  fur- 
ther quickened  by  accelerating  activities  of  discovery 
in  all  departments,  and  by  mechanical  inventions  of 
vast  power  in  translating  man  and  his  products  over 
the  earth,  the  result  is  rapid  brain-work,  stimulating 
action,  quick  combinations,  eruptive  and  vivacious 
speech. 

M.  Varet,  a  French  savan,  has  ascertained  that  a  fly 
caught  by  him  in  France  made  three  hundred  and 
thirty  movements  of  his  wings  in  a  second.  This  is 
rapid  work ;  but  a  Wall  Street  bull  will  toss  his  horns 
twice  as  fast. 

The  larger  trains  of  thought  thus  started  will  run 
of  themselves  with  time-table  exactness.  We  shall 
only  accdmpany  a  few  special  excursion  ideas  a  short 
distance  from  the  main  depot. 

An  impatient  unrest  under  discipline  and  restric- 
tions, while  kept  below  fever  heat  by  the  wet  bandages 
of  a  self-imposed  law,  makes  jails  double  punishments 
for  American  criminals,  and  homes  often  houses  for 
the  detention  of  juveniles  under  sixteen.  Confine- 
ments, except  to  a  small  class  of  our  married  popula- 
tion, is  an  abridgment  of  enterprising  work,  which, 
if  continued  beyond  a  natural  law  that  prescribes  sleep 
to  all  and  a  longer  period  of  inactivity  to  the  special 
class  just  named,  would  be  a  grievance,  calling  at  least 
for  a  convention,  addresses,  and  agitation  to  get  rid  of. 


518     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

The  distress  of  hurry  which  vexes  the  vis  inertice  out 
of  our  brains,  stirs  our  intellectual  pans  continually,  so 
that  we  do  not  always  get  the  natural  cream  of  ideas. 
An  American  is  always  working  for  condensed  milk 
processes ;  to  compress  a  cow  into  a  milk-pot,  or  utilize 
all  the  herds  in  his  neighborhood  on  his  breakfast- 
table,  in  a  way  unheard  of  elsewhere.  Of  course  this 
wide-reaching  hurry,  which  grasps  large  results  and 
scorns  the  domestic  economies,  that  occupy  the 
thoughts  of  people  elsewhere,  refuses  to  be  concerned 
for  any  length  of  time  with  the  importunities  of  suf- 
fering stomachs. 

American  stomachs  have  not  time  enough  to  wait 
on  nature.  Hence  doctors'  gigs  and  apoplectic  whirli- 
gigs. A  patent  stomach  that  should  grind  grist  for  a 
neighborhood  or  village,  and  leave  the  unstomached 
worker  to  avail  himself  of  his  accelerating  opportuni- 
ties, would  command  a  high  price.  It  would  be  hired 
out  around  the  neighborhood,  like  a  threshing-machine 
or  corn-sheller.  In  fact,  American  households  might 
in  general  be  advantageously  grouped  around  or  framed 
into  one  of  these  mechanical  digesters,  with  attach- 
ments for  washing  out,  ironing,  and  starching  their 
clothes,  and  for  doing  up  the  wasteful  processes  of 
visiting,  to  economic  advantages  that  would  tell  on  the 
census.  One  of  the  disadvantages  would  be  the  dis- 
couragement of  that  branch  of  American  industry,  now 
so  largely  prosperous,  of  doctors'  bills,  chasing  in  vain 
after  many  of  the  living  and  at  last  only  overtaking 
the  administrator  of  the  estate,  clean  out  of  breath. 

Of  course,  the  benefits  of  associated  wealth  and  skill 
have  not  been  overlooked  as  levers  to  move  enterprises, 


VELOCIPEDAL.  519 

people's  purses,  and  sometimes  those  low-down,  coarse 
adjectives,  volcanic  in  their  origin,  which,  in  case  of 
dissatisfaction,  erupt  over  the  surface.  Universal 
clothes-wringers  are  the  product  of  this  observation. 
So  other  combinations  have  been  and  are  rapidly  form- 
ing to  wring  money  out  of  city,  State,  and  Federal 
exchequers.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  the  handles  of 
these  joint  pumping  and  pocket-exhausting  companies 
all  lie  towards  the  great  cities. 

Most  of  the  business  in  the  United  States,  north  of 
Washington,  is  carried  on  after  an  express  and  acceler- 
ated fashion,  which  is  impatient  of  holidays,  and  rides 
over  the  Fourth  of  July  even,  as  ruthlessly  as  an  ex- 
press-train over  the  human  obstruction  which  thus 
gets  forwarded  on  his  journey  out  of  the  United  States 
with  a  despatch  almost  enviable  to  the  survivors. 
Even  the  Federal  Constitution  prescribes  "speedy 
trials  "  as  a  right,  and  treats  a  man  as  injured  who 
does  not  go  it  in  a  capital  way,  when  on  that  pre- 
cipitous road,  with  a  final  rush. 

The  common  law  of  the  United  States  presumes 
that  all  are  minute-men,  and  know  the  quick  step; 
while  the  uncommon  law  in  Wyoming,  Idaho,  Nevada, 
and  Colorado  dispenses  with  the  tedious  confinement 
between  the  apprehension  of  the  accused  and  his 
transporting  sentence  and  uprising.  "  Delays  are  dan- 
gerous," is  their  condensed  code. 

The  law  of  dower,  as  practically  enforced,  is  shaped 
by  the  same  rapidly  revolving  lathe,  which  makes  so 
much  of  our  domestic  hollow- ware.  The  wife  spends 
the  principal  before  her  husband's  death,  and  thus 
shuns  the  tedious  complications  of  legal  proceedings, 


520    THE   COMIC  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


VELOCIPEDAL.  521 

which  admeasures  the  dower  often  to  the  enterpising 
lawyer,  the  bailiffs,  and  the  court  clerks. 

A  marked  improvement  has  also  been  made  in  the 
distribution  of  estates  generally.  Among  the  slow 
nations  of  Europe  the  children  generally  wait  for  the 
unfortunate  old  people  to  die  before  taking  their  prop- 
erty. This  tardy  habit  is  now  found  to  be  often  produc- 
tive of  great  injury  to  children,  especially  to  those  who, 
snatched  away  by  rapid  manners  before  their  begettors, 
are  thus  defrauded  of  their  shares.  "  A  bird  in  the 
hand "  is  no  longer  a  rara  avis,  but  a  domestic  fowl 
cultivated  by  rapid  feeding.  Gifts  to  the  living  avoid 
the  taxes  and  discomforts  of  probate  courts,  in  which 
it  is  disagreeable  for  a  family,  covered  with  crape,  to 
sit  and  see  a  politician  assess  the  estate  upon  the 
heirs. 

Fast  progress  has  been  made,  also,  in  preventive  jus- 
tice. Injunctions,  behind  whose  shields  such  old  fogies 
as  Lord  Eldon,  Lord  Somers,  Lord  Thurlow,  John  Mar- 
shall, or  William  Story  were  accustomed  to  hide 
threatened  rights  until  the  danger  was  over-past,  have 
recently  been  turned  edgewise,  and  cut  down  corpora- 
tions and  others  obnoxious  Fisc-ally  or  otherwise,  or 
else  pressed  against  them  so  that  they  perspired  away 
their  adipose  stock  until  they  were  comfortably  ready 
for  a  receiver. 

The  doctrine  of  divorce,  which  has  puzzled  the 
learned  John  Miltons  in  all  the  sleepy  ages  that  have 
dozed  before  us,  has  been,  in  many  States,  simplified, 
so  that  he  who  runs  through  them  may  read  a  decree. 
Some  people  have  uncharitably  supposed  that  the  pre- 
miums offered  to  individual  disunions  by  such  States 


522   THE  come  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

as  Illinois  and  Indiana,  were  devices  to  draw  specu- 
lators thither  for  a  day  or  so ;  but  these  are  vagrant 
suspicions  that  ought  not  to  be  allowed  on  our  trains. 

In  feudal  countries,  where  purity  of  blood  is  careful- 
ly guarded,  —  inasmuch  as  the  descents  to  property  are 
the  rule  and  not  descents  from  it  as  in  America,  —  legists 
declare  that  a  woman  may  not  marry  her  cousin,  her 
uncle,  her  grandfather,  or  even  her  father,  —  a  wise 
enough  restriction,  perhaps,  for  such  benighted  folks, 
and  where  care  in  marrying  often  leaves  the  female 
part  of  the  household  to  the  dangerous  company  of 
these  relations  until  far  on  in  life.  But  with  us  women 
are  not  shut  up  to  any  such  necessities,  except  in  Utah, 
where  they  may,  in  the  course  of  a  respectably  long 
life,  marry  through  every  genealogical  degree  without 
knowing  it.  In  other  parts  they  are  as  necessary  as 
insurance  companies,  and  so  marry  very  soon ;  so 
that  silver  weddings  are  often  seen  at  an  early  age, 
while  golden  matrimonies  are  more  frequent  than  ma- 
ternities or  patrimonies.  To  every  thoughtful  man,  who 
moves  about  our  rapidly  dissolving  surfaces,  where  the 
railroad  car  is  the  kaleidoscope  which  turns  up  the 
bits  of  humanity  in  new  combinations,  a  wife  is  neces- 
sary to  put  up  a  monument  over  him  ;  for  moving  on 
is  such  a  fixed  law,  —  the  only  fixed  thing  in  America, 
except  debt  and  live  corruption,  —  that  while  he  was 
turning  his  majority,  all  his  family  relations  would 
have  gone  to  other  States. 

The  two  curiosities  in  the  United  States  are  fat 
people  and  servants.  Both  run  away  in  a  velocipedal 
hurry ;  the  former  into  sharp  bargains,  and  the  latter 
into  independent  powers  which  dictate  treaties  and 


VELOCIPEDAL.  523 

make  alliances  like  other  self-governing  communities. 
An  Americ'an  family  is  like  a  South  Carolina  regiment, 
all  officers  and  no  privates ;  a  boarding-house,  a  Swiss 
confederacy,  in  which  the  cantons,  wedged  into  neutral- 
izing elements,  get  forward  like  a  stool  braced  every- 
way and  equipoised  into  an  aching  discomfort ;  and  a 
hotel,  like  twenty  German  Bunds  entangled  by  contra- 
rious  independent  interests  that  knot  themselves  into 
teasing  discontents,  and  fret  into  jars  which  hold  a 
variety  of  unpreserved,  acidulating  fruits.  The  freest 
joke  in  all  America  is  one  of  its  large  hotels,  which 
fancies  Axminster  carpets  and  chandeliers  in  a  large 
parlor,  and  numerous  discomforts  packed  in  ever-dwin- 
dling rooms,  to  be  happiness.  But  then  the  "  gentle- 
manly proprietor  "  makes  up  for  all  this  in  the  bills, 
which  convince  all  the  guests,  that  they  must  have 
enjoyed  themselves  and  at  an  American  rate  of  speed. 

Trade  has  also  had  its  great  advances,  not  only  in 
the  figures  which  stand  in  merchants'  magazines  like 
pyramids,  with  bases  always  widening  downwards,  but 
in  the  dwindling  measures,  quarts,  gallons,  pecks,  and 
bushels,  and  the  waning  qualities  which  sharpen  up- 
wards to  steady  apexes.  How  to  make  up  in  the 
bill  what  is  taken  from  the  body  is  a  critical  study,  in 
which  most  tradesmen  have,  without  any  prizes  offered 
by  outsiders,  become  great  proficients.  If  that  man  is 
a  public  benefactor  who  makes  two  blades  grow  in  the 
place  of  one,  surely  he  may  be  rewarded  with  a  passing 
notice,  who  takes  all  the  steel  out  of  the  one  sent  to 
him  for  repairs,  and  then  divides  up  the  instrument  into 
several  blades.  Making  water  into  wine,  chalk  into 
milk,  chemicals  into  as  many  varieties  of  drinkables  as 


524     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  .UNITED   STATES. 

there  are  days  of  the  year,  and  diluting  articles  deemed 
too  strong  when  left  to  their  raw  native  vigor,  so  as  to 
adapt  them  to  our  weakened  constitutions,  attest  the 
beneficent  designs  of  manufacturers  and  merchants 
upon  Americans  of  plethoric  habits. .  Peabodies  shell- 
ing out  to  poorbodies  furnish  examples  of  abundant 
charity  not  so  widely  touching  as  these. 

To  make  a  small  measure  go  twice  as  far  as  a  large 
one  is  more  than  a  feat ;  it  approaches  creation.  What 
may  in  time  be  considered  a  double  bed,  it  is  impos- 
sible yet  to  foresee  ;  but  certain  it  is,  that  while  single 
beds  are  increasing  to  an  alarmingly  wide  extent,  their 
narrowness  is  becoming  such  as  to  require  a  new  defi- 
nition of  a  line  to  avoid  disagreeable  collisions. 

Mercantile  failures,  elsewhere  hurtful,  are  with  us 
hurried  on  into  vivacious  benefits,  dividing  up,  before 
the  expiration  of  the  credits  given,  the  accumulated 
profits  which  otherwise  might  accumulate  in  stagnating 
dulness  in  the  firm.  A  steady  increase  of  wages  is 
solving,  too,  those  perplexing  theories  how  to  balance 
capital  and  labor ;  a  weekly  distribution  of  earnings 
keeping  down  injudicious  balances  in  the  bank. 

The  frequent  jumps  of  men  from  low  places  into 
high  ones,  with  a  celerity  very  pleasing  to  their  fami- 
lies and  often  to  their  creditors,  show  that  the  world  is 
governed  too  much  ;  for  acting  on  this  Jeffersouian 
maxim,  most  of  these  ready  leapers  leave  off  the  gov- 
erning part  and  expend  their  activities  in  securing, 
along  with  their  weak  salaries,  strong  flying  benefits, 
which  only  light  on  the  vigilant. 

While  the  velocipedal  ways  of  Americans  thus  cut 
across  their  own  country,  it  is  in  foreign  fields  that 


VELOCIPEDAL.  525 

they  are  most  striking  and  cutting.  Crossing  the  well- 
worn  paths  of  Europe,  scattering  high-premium  gold 
on  those  jolly  fellows,  landlords  and  waiters,  they  ridge 
its  old  historic  surfaces  with  little  histories  which  the 
facetious  persons,  who  catch  sight  of  them  as  they 
whiz  through  histories,  which  they  leave  grandly  be- 
hind them  and  all  unknown,  retail  with  as  much  glee, 
as  the  travellers  themselves  once  did  saleratus,  fine-cut 
nails,  or  bobinet.  Their  scant  intellectual  stores  and 
unfurnished  stock  of  knowledge,  so  far  from  embarrass- 
ing, only  enable  them  to  spin  on  faster.  Mythology, 
paintings,  biographies,  architecture,  are  soon  wound  up 
on  their  clean  spindles. 

Another  class,  like  aeronautic  vessels,  have  gaseous 
heads  and  heavy  undergearing,  which  enable  them  to 
run  over  and  run  down  everything  abroad  by  swift-mov- 
ing slangs.  They  always  float  by  the  bad  air  of  their 
own  heads,  and  are  apt  to  anchor  in  vicious  soils. 
These  they  can-can.  The  spent  money  surprises  the 
hotel  squeezers  ;  the  spent  morals  astonish  themselves 
by  the  ease  with  which  they  lose  their  little  all. 

But  of  all  the  fast  classes  in  America,  that  is  the 
most  velocipedal  which,  having  expressed  themselves 
through  the  modish  follies  of  the  largest  American 
cities,  are  transported  to  the  stronger  vices  of  Paris. 
Tired  of  tapping  the  younger  trees  of  American  growth, 
they  spend  the  rest  of  their  precious  lives  in  pecking 
assiduously  the  rotten  parts  of  foreign  woods,  content 
with  the  phosphoric  slime  of  decay  and  dissolving 
maturities. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

PUZZLES  AND  CROSS-READINGS;  OR,  JOHNSON'S  ENTER- 
TAINMENTS. 

APRIL  14,  1865,  TO  MARCH  4,  1869. 

Puzzles  about  Hemp  and  Paper.  —  Weak  Brains  at  rest.  —  The  Return 
of  the  Holders  of  Sabres  and  Guns.  —  Our  Dead.  —  Fighters  become 
Workers.  —  A  Modern  Sisyphus  rolls  a  Stone  up  Hill.  —  How  it  rolled 
back.  —  The  Interpretation  by  Congress  of  its  own  Rights.  —  Southern 
Delegates  declined.  —  Puzzles  solved.  —  Vetoing  made  easy.  —  The 
New  Orleans  Riots.  —  The  Zigzag  Journey  of  the  President  to  the 
Tomb  of  Douglas.  —  The  Fenian  Republic  in  Union  Square.  —  The 
Sham-rock  compared  with  other  Rocks.  —  The  French  Moths  in  Mexi- 
co; and  how  they  were  singed.  —  Amnesties  and  Pardons.  —  Scrip- 
ture outdone. —  Forgiveness  forced  upon  the  Unrepenting. — Results 
of  Congressional  Reconstruction.  —  The  President  tried  and  one  found 
wanting.  —  Value  of  one  Vote.  —  Alaska  and  St.  Thomas.  —  Chicago, 
nnalarmed,  goes  on  dis-pairing  but  not  despairing.  —  The  Narrow 
Escapes  of  New  York.  —  Fiske-Ville.  —  Johnson  gets  Mudd  out  of  the 
Dry  Tortugas. 

WHEEE  to  find  hemp  enough  to  suspend  those 
who  had  supported  the  overwhelmed  Confed- 
eracy was  the  first  puzzle  that  presented  itself  to 
the  furious  patriotism  of  the  constitutional  Substitute. 
This,  however,  soon  gave  place  to  the  still  more 
difficult  one,  where  to  find  paper  enough  to  pardon 
them. 

Four  of  the  assassins  of  the  good  man  were  effectively 
deprived  of  any  further  earthly  abuse  of  their  weak 
brains,  maudlin  sentiments,  and  passions  ;  the  others 


PUZZLES  AND   CROSS-READINGS.  527 

were  sent  between  stone  walls  or  to  the  dry  sands  of 
the  Tortugas. 

The  heroic  holders  of  the  sabre  and  musket,  —  their 
stern,  sad  work  now  done,  bore  them  back,  —  draped  in 
sable  for  the  comrades  who  slept  in  trenched  glory 
along  the  furrowed  parallel,  in  the  storm-swept  field, 
or  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  the  Chickahominy 
and  James,  —  back  to  the  plough,  to  the  workshop,  to 
the  peaceful  businesses  of  life,  to  reunions  with  those 
whose  busy  fingers  and  busier  hearts  had  forwarded  to 
them  love  messages  and  mindful  tokens  while  absent. 

The  army  of  fighters  was  disbanded  into  battalions 
of  workers. 

On  the  29th  of  May  the  new  President  commenced 
the  Sisyphus  business  of  Southern  reconstruction; 
first  rolling  to  the  top  of  the  hill  the  stone  of  a  pro- 
visional government  for  North  Carolina,  which,  of 
course,  rolled  back  again,  covered  by  the  old  shells  of 
the  Confederacy.  By  the  middle  of  July  he  had 
tugged  up  the  same  stone  under  different  names,  as 
Mississippi,  Georgia,  Texas,  Alabama,  Florida,  and  South 
Carolina,  only  to  find  it  rolling  down  speedily,  hurting 
the  colored  people  and  Union  whites,  and  creating  a 
butternut-colored  atmosphere  all  around  it.  The  en- 
tertainment was  too  often  repeated  to  be  jocose,  except 
to  Mr.  Johnson,  who  believed  in  a  detached  idea  in- 
dustriously pursued.  The  delegates  to  Congress  under 
his  scheme,  who  presented  themselves  at  Washington, 
in  December,  1865,  were  found  to  be  all  of  the  saffron 
complexion  and  hue.  They  had  already  forgotten  that 
there  had  been  any  war,  and  only  remembered  their 
ancient  rights,  and  were  ready  to  draw  back  pay,  or 


528     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

anything  else  back,  except  declarations  of  not  having 
been  in  the  least  wrong  in  the  late  little  unpleasantness. 
Congress  read  their  own  privileges,  rights,  and  duties 
in  quite  a  different  way ;  declared  their  exclusive  right, 
as  representatives  of  the  people,  to  deal  with  the  new 
puzzles ;  passed  the  Freedinen's  Bureau  Bill  for  the 
protection  of  the  colored  property  of  the  South,  the 
Civil  Rights  Bill,  and  the  proposed  Fourteenth  Con- 
stitutional Amendment.  While  they  believed  in  the 
dead  past  burying  its  dead,  they  did  not  embrace  the 
idea  of  its  burying  the  living  with  them. 

Mr.  Johnson  now  studied  the  Art  of  Vetoing  Made 
Easy;  and  from  his  cross-readings  began  to  add  im- 
mensely to  the  American  official  archives  by  Xanthippe 
messages,  whose  unlovely  words  have  greatly  embossed 
the  rich  cabinets  of  vituperative  specimens,  for  a  long 
time  accumulating  at  Washington. 

In  July,  1866,  a  riot  was  created  in  New  Orleans, 
—  the  counterpart  of  the  pat-riot  disturbances  in  New 
York  three  years  before,  —  in  which  thirty-four  loyal 
colored  and  three  loyal  colorless  people  were  added 
to  the  Crescent  cemeteries.  The  citizens  who  had 
participated  in  the  bonfires  and  illuminations,  on  the 
arrival  of  Farragut  and  Porter  in  1862  were  merci- 
fully spared.  In  August  following,  the  acting  Presi- 
dent, accompanied  by  Mr.  Seward,  —  whose  wonderful 
pen  through  the  silent  diplomatic  struggle  abroad, 
which  ran  parallel  with  the  armed  strife  at  home, 
cannot  be  alluded  to  with  scant  praise,  —  set  out  for 
Chicago,  to  lay  the  corner-stone  of  a  monument  to  the 
powerful  dike-breaker.  Never  was  a  journey  so  long. 
The  road  thither  seemed  to  have  got  intoxicated  and 


PUZZLES  AND   CROSS-READINGS. 


529 


23 


530 

reeled  and  tumbled  all  over  the  "West ;  while  the 
jerky  speeches,  hiccuping  along  the  wavy  ways, 
endeavored  in  vain  to  catch  up  with  and  to  find  tho 
President. 

This  year  was  made  memorable  by  the  establish- 
ment of  a  wonderful  republic  for  Ireland  in  Union 
Square,  New  York,  and  the  quiet  election,  without  any 
votes,  of  Mr.  Koberts  to  be  its  head ;  an  Irish  inven- 
tion, for  the  easy  solution  of  that  perplexing  question 
of  how  to  get  enough  votes,  most  praiseworthy.  The 
novel  mode  of  raising  an  army,  and  of  replenishing  a 
treasury,  whose  invisible  outflow  was  so  steady  and 
well  regulated  that  it  never  perplexed  Wall  Street, 
were  admirable  illustrations  of  the  good-nature  of  the 
friendly  sons  and  daughters  of  Saint  Patrick. 

The  sham-rock,  on  which  they  touched  poured  out 
streams  as  abundant  as  the  rock  which  Moses  struck. 
Indeed,  it  was  almost  as  good  a  milch  cow  as  Plymouth 
Rock. 

In  February,  1867,  the  French  moths, — hatched  out 
in  1862  in  a  Napoleonic  fancy  nest,  and  darting  off 
into  Mexico,  through  whose  chronic  flames  they  played 
with  the  usual  results,  —  were  terribly  scorched  in  a 
candle  sent  out  by  Mr.  Seward.  The  head  moth, 
Maximilian,  fascinated  by  the  gilt  of  an  imperial 
candelabra,  was  so  burnt,  that  he  disappeared  like  the 
vagaries  of  South  American  empire,  which  hovered  on 
the  wings  of  that  other  Gallic  moth,  that  now  flits 
around  the  gas-jets  of  the  Tuileries. 

Mr.  Johnson's  amnesties  and  pardons  are  too  nu- 
merous for  anything  but  a  calculating-machine.  He 
began  May  29,  1865,  and  only  ended  March  4,  1869. 


PUZZLES  AND   CROSS-READINGS.  531 

Tired  of  cross-reading  the  Constitution,  he  betook  him- 
self to  Scripture,  and,  with  his  mode  of  interpretation, 
spelt  out  a  duty  to  forgive  all  of  the  unrepentant,  in- 
cluding Mr.  J.  Davis,  the  prize-taking  Breckenridge, 
and  other  conspicuous  sinners. 

In  spite  of  the  semi- weekly  vetoes,  however,  which 
obliged  Congress  to  pass  all  laws  twice,  it  contrived  to 
reconstruct  all  of  the  lately  disorganizing  and  disor- 
ganized States  except  Virginia,  Mississippi,  and  Texas. 
Some  very  poor  Northern  timber  and  unconstitutional 
braces  were  wrought  into  the  hastily  constructed  and 
urgently  needed  fabrics,  which,  however,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  will  be  speedily  removed.  Angry  with  the  so- 
lution of  the  puzzles,  the  President  attempted  to  read 
athwart  the  Tenure  of  Office  Act  Mr.  Stanton's  war 
duties,  for  which,  March  5,  1869,  he  was  requested  by 
the  House  of  Eepresentatives  to  appear  before  the  Sen- 
ate and  make  answer.  From  March  29th  to  May  16th 
his  trial  lasted,  interflecked  by  some  fine  veins  of 
forensic  eloquence,  and  at  last  bringing  out  the  value 
of  a  single  vote,  —  that  which  prevented  conviction,  — 
for  the  benefit  of  future  electoral  harangues. 

The  restless,  lever  pen  of  Mr.  Seward  pried  up  new 
territory  for  the  screaming  eagle  to  light  upon,  —  the 
distant  and  hazy  Alas-ka,  rich  in  ices  and  other  cool 
reasons,  and  St.  Thomas  the  Danish,  whose  abundant 
lemons  may,  when  well  mixed,  allay,  without  quench- 
ing, our  thirst  for  foreign  drinks. 

These  speculations  did  not,  it  is  needless  to  add,  dis- 
courage Chicago.  Always  dis-pairing  individuals,  she 
never  despaired  for  herself.  Her  courts  granted  four 
hundred  and  sixty-eight  divorces  during  1868 ;  but  not- 


532     THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

withstanding  the  untoward  fact,  her  unchecked  popula- 
tion sang  on  more  loudly  consoling  lullabies  to  her  well- 
rocked  and  increasing  cradles  of  grain.  Efforts  were 
made  the  same  year  to  annex  New  York  to  the  Erie 
Eailway  and  to  change  its  name  to  Fisk-ville.  These 
efforts  might  have  succeeded,  but  that  the  attention  of 
the  leading  proprietor  was  diverted  to  the  Pacific; 
and  the  motion  for  the  expected  change  was  postponed 
to  a  later  term  of  the  Supremest  Court  in  the  city  of 
New  York. 

The  last  feat  of  Mr.  Johnson  was  to  get  Mudd  out 
of  the  Dry  Tortugas. 


PUZZLES   AND   GROSS-READINGS. 


533 


CHAPTER    XXIL 

TAKEN  FOR  GRANTED;   OR,  WHAT  IS  EXPECTED  OF  GRANT 
AND  THE  AMERICAN   FUTURE. 

MARCH  4,  1869,  TO . 

The  supposed  Difficulties  of  writing  History  in  advance  considered,  and 
the  Popular  Delusions  on  the  Subject  disposed  of.  —  Lively  Expecta- 
tions of  what  our  future  Presidents,  Cabinet  Members,  Foreign  Minis- 
ters, etc.,  etc.,  will  be  and  do.  —  What  Citizens  will  be  exempt  from 
Executing  and  Garroting  the  Laws.  —  The  Public  Debt  to  dRappear.  — 
The  Ways  considered.  —  Cut  up  into  Dividends  and  no  more  heard 
of.  —  What  is  expected  of  Common  Schools  and  Sunday  Schools  in 
improving  Public  Men  and  their  Speeches.  —  Certain  Occupations  to 
be  dispensed  with.  — The  Uses  to  which  their  Pursuers  are  to  be  put. 
—  Improvements  in  Judges,  Injunctions,  and  Court-Houses.  —  Exten- 
sion of  Efforts  of  Society  for  preventing  Cruelty  to  Animals,  to  Employ- 
ers, etc. — Woman's  Rights  discussed  from  various  Aspects.  —  Men  and 
Women  equal, — especially  Women.  —  How  any  Differences  between 
them  are  to  be  disposed  of.  —  How  Children  are  to  be  utilized  before 
they  get  to  be  Twenty-one  and  lose  their  Activities.— The  new  Arts 
and  Sciences  to  be  taught.  —  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  regulate  the 
Fashions,  and  how.  —  The  President  and  Sunday  Schools. —  All  Min- 
ing to  be  transferred  to  Wall  Street.  —  Advance  Sheets  of  Reports  for 
1969.  —  What  our  Railway  System  is  to  be.  —  Grumbling  and  Patriot- 
ism. —  Of  the  Future  of  Chicago,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Bos- 
ton. —  A  Pax  Volriscum. 

MOST  people  suppose  that  it  is  difficult  to  write 
history  in  advance.     There  is  no  greater  delu- 
sion.    Facts  —  even  when  we  can  get  at  them  and  are 
sure  of  them,  which  seldom  happens  —  are  great  ob- 
structions to  a  narrative.     They  involve  sudden  leaps 


TAKEN  FOR   GRANTED.  535 

into  unforeseen  depths  of  human  action,  perplexing 
struggles  through  very  dynastic  uncertainties,  or  as- 
cents to  unexpected  developments  of  character,  trying 
to  one's  judgment  and  patience,  and  often  hurtful  to 
one's  pride  of  opinion.  Our  preconceptions,  unverified 
by  a  set  of  obstinate  facts,  are  distressed  by  the  un- 
satisfactory contradictions.  We  halt  dissatisfied  on  a 
dusty  road,  which  the  tramp  of  events  has  worn 
smooth,  and  left  nothing  to  novelty  or  an  industrious 
fancy. 

Besides,  the  great  majority  of  readers  are  partisans, 
and  have  a  right  to  be  disappointed  at  and  to  blame 
those  unreasoning  conclusions,  which  slide  inevitably 
out  of  realities.  They  confront  sternly  those  facts, 
which  affront  them,  by  insisting  on  happening  in 
a  way  or  order  different  from  their  expectations  or 
wishes.  Hitherto,  we  have  been  obliged  to  conform  to 
the  hard  conditions  thus  inherent  in  actual  chronicles, 
and  have  been  forced  to  submit  our  readers  to  these 
annoying  certainties. 

We  can,  however,  now  dismiss  these  tantalizing 
fixities  of  events,  which  have  run  before  us,  and  left 
us  the  wearisome  business  of  catching  up  to  them ; 
and  leaving  them  to  overtake  us,  if  they  can,  to 
write  up  a  future  history  of  events,  which  ought  to 
happen,  and  which  will  greatly  disappoint  the  sanguine 
expectations  of  Americans  if  they  do  not.  The  excuse 
for  failure  will  be  lessened  by  the  outlined  path  which 
we  here  stretch  downward  into  the  wooded  future. 

We  take  it  for  granted,  then,  that  all  our  future  Presi- 
dents will  be  the  very  best  and  most  competent  men  in 
the  nation,  spontaneously  acclamated  to  the  office,  and 


536     THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE  UNITED   STATES. 

not  wrung  out  by  industrious  party  conventions  for 
political  ends.  Uncommitted  to  committees  or  political 
sponsors,  and  unweighted  by  onerous  gratitude  to  ex- 
pensively working  party  canvassers,  they  will  naturally 
hereafter  appoint  to  Cabinet  places  and  diplomatic 
posts  statesmen  of  pre-eminent  ability,  patriotism,  and 
integrity,  who  will  as  modestly  wait  to  be  invited  in/ 
as  the  same  class  now,  when  in,  stand  as  if  hopelessly 
deaf,  to  be  distinctly  invited  out.  That  they  will  re- 
luctantly, if  at  all,  subject  weak  citizens  to  the  pains 
and  penalties  of  executing  and  garroting  the  laws,  or 
the  slow  and  unpractised,  to  the  heavy  tasks  of  carry- 
ing the  public  burdens. 

The  public  debt  will  naturally  disappear.  Perhaps 
some  fortunate  speculator  in  petroleum  or  Erie  stock 
will  pay  it  off,  rather  than  have  it  in  the  way,  or  see  it 
left  to  bear  the  market  inopportunely.  The  secret  of 
making  money  scarce  will  lead  doubtless  to  the  dis- 
covery of  making  it  plenty ;  and  then  the  public  debt, 
being  of  no  use  to  anybody,  will  naturally  stand  aside, 
as  poor  relations  in  times  of  plenty.  Besides,  gentle- 
men being  selected,  not  for  their  own  interests,  but  for 
the  public  good,  will,  it  is  to  be  expected,  donate  their 
salaries  to  a  sinking  fund,  which  will  carry  it  off,  as 
some  companies  do  their  stockholders'  dividends,  to  un- 
fathoined  bottoms.  In  fact,  if  the  debt  could  be  cut 
up  into  dividends,  nothing  more  would  be  heard  of  it. 
If  the  whole  truth  may  be  safely  told,  the  difficulty  in 
the  extinguishment  of  the  debt  will  not  be  so  much  in 
its  undoubted  disappearance,  as  in  settling  upon  that 
plan  among  the  numbers  presented,  which  will  be  per- 
mitted to  hurry  it  out  of  sight. 


TAKEN   FOR   GRANTED.  537 

Of  course,  when  the  Federal  obligations  quit,  the 
State  and  city  debts  will  not  have  the  face  to  remain 
behind. 

These  subjects  out  of  the  way,  members  of  Congress, 
being  then  gentlemen,  as  well  as  educated,  capable,  and 
honest  men,  dragged  unwillingly  from  and  not  into 
business,  will  deal  with  the  few  remaining  topics  with 
a  wise  silence,  —  and  this  course  we  take  for  grant-ed 
now  ;  or  else  will  discuss  them  and  not  each  other,  or 
the  encyclopaedia  of  unrelated  questions,  the  publication 
of  which  now  so  enhances  the  price  of  paper. 

This  improvement  in  our  Congressional  debates  will 
have  a  corresponding  advantage,  also,  to  those  foreign- 
ers who,  desirous  of  learning  our  system,  venture  upon 
the  speeches  made  at  the  Capitol,  and,  hopelessly  mis- 
led by  the  terms  employed,  and  the  ferocious  adjectives 
that  commit  horrible  murders  on  almost  every  para- 
graph, confound  our  geography  with  that  of  the  Can- 
nibal Islands.  We  also  take  it  for  granted,  that  our 
public  men  will  wait  for  events  to  justify  the  crude 
speculations,  which  they  toss  out  in  conversations  with 
reporters,  before  cruelly  amusing  the  good-natured 
public  with  their  vaticinations.  Possibly,  too,  the 
spread  of  common  schools  and  Sunday  schools,  teaching 
grammar  and  morality,  may  lead  to  the  disuse  by  our 
print-rushing  politicians  of  styles  of  speech  quite  in- 
comprehensible, and  of  words  so  raw  in  outline  and  so 
destitute  of  middle  letters  as  to  lead  profane  people  to 
fancy  that  they  are  imitations  of  their  own  heedless 
expressions.  Of  course,  in  the  better  days  now  dawn- 
ing, "  rings  "  will  only  be  used  to  tie  quadrupeds  to 
posts,  or  to  restrain  vicious  bipeds,  in  state  prisons. 
23* 


538    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES 

Combinations  to  do  good  and  increase  the  general 
happiness  will  naturally  supplant  those  curious  Ameri- 
can circles,  whose  peripheries  are  not  equidistant  from 
the  centre,  but  which  consist  in  fact  only  of  a  centre, 
and  that  centre,  self. 

Happiness,  and  not  wealth,  being  thus  the  main 
pursuit,  of  course  many  kinds  of  occupations,  now 
called  business,  such  as  brokers,  money-lenders,  etc., 
will  cease,  and  those  now  engaged  in  these  so-called 
pursuits  —  of  others,  will  look  after  the  poor  to  minis- 
ter unto  them  and  not  to  take  them  in.  The  superior 
claims  of  charity  upon  the  fortunate,  who  are  now 
living,  will  naturally  be  enhanced  by  the  fact  that, 
being  at  present  in  the  world,  they  cannot  reasonably 
expect  to  live  much  longer  than  1970,  and  may  quit 
much  earlier,  leaving  some  selfish  heirs  not  disposed 
to  divide  except  for  an  equivalent. 

Many  judges  being  released  from  their  present  ardu- 
ous duties  of  so  administering  law  as  to  get  re-elected 
—  for  then  no  one  will  value  an  office  so  much  a 
sinecure  —  will  have  some  time,  especially  in  Xew 
York,  to  study  law ;  and  some  courts  of  appeal  can  be 
repealed.  The  only  injunctions  issued  will  be  oral, 
delivered,  not  to  railroad  speculators,  but  to  indiscreet 
juveniles,  unwarily  betrayed  into  their  first  and  last 
offence.  The  expense  of  court-houses  being  thus  par- 
tially saved,  it  is  expected,  that  the  small  unventilated 
places  in  which  law  is  peddled  out  will  be  enlarged, 
and  a  humane  effort  be  thus  made  to  save  the  exposed 
lives  of  suitors,  lawyers,  jurors,  and  judges. 

The  American  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty 
to  Animals  will  naturally,  with  larger  means,  extend 


TAKEN  FOR   GRANTED.  539 

its  operations,  and  embrace  employers,  suffering  from 
servants  of  independent  ways,  from  domestics  who 
take  six  evenings  in  the  week  out,  and  allow  their 
mistress  one,  and  who,  for  certain  discreet  considera- 
tions, not  worth  mentioning  here,  permit  those,  who 
divide  their  estates  with  them,  to  occupy  a  portion  of 
the  same  house,  on  condition  of  not  interfering  with 
their  separate  apartments. 

We  also  take  it  for  granted,  that  woman's  rights 
will  not  be  wrongfully  urged  or  withheld  ;  but  will  be 
so  adjusted,  that  the  public  will  ascertain  what  some 
people  would  ask  for,  if  they  did  not  become  incompre- 
hensibie  through  abundant  talking,  or  what  —  con- 
sidering the  modesty  of  the  applicants  —  they  really 
ought  to  have,  although  they  do  not  clamor  for  it  in  a 
way  that  makes  some  suspect,  that  men  are  either 
to  be  extinguished  outright,  or  else  kept  for  a  few 
hundred  years  on  probation,  until  they  shall  have 
learned  to  be  respectful,  just,  and  unmanlike. 

In  this  coming  good  time,  men  and  women  are  to 
be  equal,  —  especially  the  women.  If  any  differences 
are  discovered  in  any  way  between  them,  these  differ- 
ences are  to  be  submitted  to  conventions  chosen  by 
the  wisest  women,  and  the  differences  either  to  be 
entirely  suppressed,  or  the  dissenters  all  expelled  from 
the  United  States.  Uniformity  is  to  be  secured  at  all 
hazards.  If  necessary,  ballot-boxes  will  be  attached 
to  cradles  ;  and  women,  by  any  cause  confined  from 
active  canvassing,  will  be  allowed  to  vote  twice  at  the 
next  election,  in  order  to  bring  up  their  rights  to  a 
point  where  nature  left  them. 

We  further  take  it  for  granted,  that  children  will 


540    THE   COMIC  HISTORY   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

then  be  content  to  be  vivacious ;  will  be  left  to  the 
witching  ways,  the  pulpy  and  dewy  freshness  of  the 
morning  glory  of  life,  until  they  shall  have  gradually 
come  to  the  ripe  maturities  of  action ;  that  they  will 
not  fall  from  grace  into  the  condemnation  of  mis- 
chievous notice ;  will  not  daily  burst  into  astonishing 
feats  of  memory  or  attainment  before  reluctant,  domes- 
tic audiences,  nor  cany  on  social  insurrections  against 
the  United  States  of  their  begettors  until  they  have 
achieved  their  independence,  nor  hold  a  Fourth  of 
July  every  day  in  the  year. 

Should  reform  in  this  direction  not  take  place  as 
just  anticipated,  then  we  shall  expect  that  infantile 
precocities  will  be  utilized  before  they  shall  have 
evaporated  into  the  insipidities  of  manhood  and  wo- 
manhood. At  present,  it  is  well  understood,  children 
are  anachronisms,  sadly  out  of  place,  squandering 
uselessly  their  best  powers  without  any  corresponding 
responsibilities ;  legally  treated  as  minors,  when  they 
are  in  fact  majors ;  denied  the  legal  rights  to  marry 
until  they  reach  a  period  when  marriage  is  tame  and 
idle,  and  the  means  to  support  a  wife  are  exhausted ; 
prohibited  from  going  to  Congress  and  being  Presi- 
dents, while  full  of  original  ideas  and  administrative 
ability,  and  allowed  to  go  when  they  have  oozed  away 
through  the  leakages  of  active  growths  all  capacity, 
and  become  just  —  what  we  see  them  at  Washington ; 
and  wasting  in  pantalets  the  money  which,  if  suf- 
fered, they  might  earn  better  than  the  old  heads 
which  are  now  only  figure-heads. 

We  shall  not  be  surprised  to  see,  if  not  during 
Grant's  time,  at  least  before  the  century  runs  out,  a 


TAKEN   FOR   GRANTED.  541 

constitutional  amendment  relieving  aged  Americans 
—  those,  for  example,  who  have  attained  the  ripe,  very 
ripe  age  of  twenty-one  —  from  the  duties  and  cares  of 
office,  and  securing  to  the  public  the  benefit  of  young 
vigorous  intellects,  varying  from  twelve  to  seventeen 
years  of  age. 

The  happy  results  of  this  change  will  be  apparent 
• —  to  any  infant  mind.  Short-jacketed  M.  C.'s  will 
impart  new  vivacity  to  Congressional  debate ;  young 
ministers  to  foreign  courts  will  be  able  to  acquire,  if 
they  do  not  know,  some  language  beside  the  American, 
and  be  able  to  converse  with  those  with  whom  they 
have  business, — an  un-speakable  luxury  now.  Active, 
bustling  infants  will  give  a  new  ardor  to  journal- 
ism, and  produce  a  more  enterprising  corps  of  wide- 
awake, newspaper  correspondents,  to  keep  up  the  stock 
of  telegraph  companies  by  information  which,  being 
constantly  in  advance  of  the  facts,  would  fairly  repre- 
sent and  be  fitting  types  of,  the  infantile  correspondents 
themselves,  and  necessitate  additional  contradictions. 
As  territorial  governors,  obliged  to  take  hazardous 
journeys  on  our  railways, — which  often  intervene  and 
prevent  older  men  from  reaching  their  destination,  — 
they  would  be  nimble  enough  to  get  out  of  the  wreck, 
or  perhaps  smart  enough  to  keep  their  deaths  secret, 
and  have  their  ancestors  draw  their  salary,  —  thus 
accomplishing,  although  not  present,  the  principal 
business  of  that  office.  Then,  too,  how  much  livelier 
would  things  go  on  in  our  churches,  if,  instead  of  the 
dull,  old  elders,  deacons,  or  vestrymen,  now  seldom 
elected  before  they  reach  the  great  age  of  thirty,  and 
who,  when  they  were  boys,  were  smart  enough,  although 


542     THE   COMIC   HISTOHY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES 


TAKEN  FOR   GRANTED.  543 

not  as  alert  as  their  own  boys  now,  were  allowed  to 
rest  their  stiffer  awkward  limbs  in  their  pews,  and 
ecclesiastical  affairs  were  managed  by  their  youngers  ? 
The  sick  would  be  visited  by  cheerful,  round-faced 
persons,  bright  with  the  health  which  would  be  brought 
as  a  living  fact  to  the  invalid  ;  widows  would  be  com- 
forted by  the  presence  of  dark-haired  and  hopeful 
youths,  and  not  depressed  by  the  aspect  of  people  en- 
cumbered with  wives  and  the  chilling  experience  of  at 
least  a  score  and  a  half  of  years ;  while  the  poor  would 
receive  liberally  from  those  who  well  know,  that  the 
best  use  for  money  is  to  keep  it  in  vigilant  circulation. 

Business  would  also  be  conducted  on  youthful  prin- 
ciples, in  consonance  with  the  other  rapid  ways  of  the 
times  ;  capital  would  be  nimble  and  alert,  creating 
profits  so  lively  that  they  would  leap  back  into  the 
common  and  rapidly  running  current.  Old  legislative 
peculators,  bank  and  trust  defaulters,  would  soon,  in 
the  natural  course  of  things,  and  without  the  shocks 
of  legal  trials,  —  which  generally  produce  no  results, 
—  be  displaced  ;  while  young  iniquity  would  scarcely 
acquire  the  rime  and  rust  which  now  incrust  so  many 
of  the  old  instruments  of  corruption,  making  them 
almost  respectable.  Biographies,  now  often  running 
tediously  through  so  many  chapters,  would  be  brief ; 
as  an  American  life  might  be  assumed  to  close  up 
substantially  at  twenty-five  at  least,  and  we  should 
get  the  rich  morning  cream,  without  wearying  our- 
selves with  collecting  the  thin  globules  that  float  on 
the  pan  of  age. 

In  the  better  times  to  which  of  course  everybody 
looks,  we  take  it  for  granted,  also,  that  the  every-day 


544    THE   COMIC   HISTORY   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

arts  and  the  familiar  sciences,  now  taught  in  schools 
and  colleges,  will  be  laid  aside ;  and  that  Greek,  Latin, 
Trench,  German,  Italian,  Irish,  and  other  tongues,  — 
those  sad  reminders  of  Babels  and  other  polyglot  at- 
tempts and  results,  —  will  give  place  to  more  practical 
studies.  How  to  cook,  so  as  not  to  destroy  the  rem- 
nants of  stomachs  left  by  candy-eating,  hot  breads,  and 
other  delectable  addictions  of  the  old  barbarous  times 
which  America  has  passed  dyspeptically  through ; 
how  to  get  a  husband  or  wife,  in  every  way  suited 
to  the  expectations  and  ideas  of  different  members 
of  the  family,  and  on  a  scale  mathematically  ad- 
justed to  the  pecuniary  latitude  and  longitude  calcu- 
lated from  the  paternal  meridian  ;  how  to  scale  a  tariff 
for  conductors,  which  shall  not  raise  the  market  price 
of  gold  rings,  studs,  and  heavy  watches,  and  yet  leave 
something  for  the  directors  to  operate  the  stock  with  ; 
the  best  methods  of  acquiring  a  fortune  without  the 
stale  process  of  failure  and  settling  with  creditors  ;  the 
mode  of  conducting  railway  collisions  and  steamboat 
explosions,  without  ruining  whole  families  and  de- 
stroying rising  communities  at  a  blow,  and  without 
leaving  so  many  facetious  questions  to  funny  coroners 
and  irresistibly  comic  jurors  ;  a  method  of  advertising 
wares  and  leaving  some  praiseful  adjectives  not  used 
up ;  a  system  which  should  graduate  the  decrease  in 
weights  and  measures  to  the  price  ;  and  how  to  make 
an  hour's  work  go  as  far  as  ten  old-fashioned  absurd 
hours,  —  these  will  help  to  furnish  out  a  curriculum 
of  study  for  institutions  high  and  low. 

The  fashions  will  be  regulated  by  the  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury,  who  will  issue  a  daily  telegraphic  bulle- 


TAKEN  FOR   GRANTED.  545 

tin,  so  that  no   one   shall  have  any  advantage  over 
another. 

The  President  of  the  United  States,  by  way  of  keep- 
ing his  hand  in,  may  practise  on  a  Sunday  school  every 
Sunday,  addressing  them  in  rotation,  and  going  over 
those  in  New  Jersey  and  Texas  several  times,  if  a  safe 
pass  can  be  secured.  The  antique  modes  of  mining 
will  be  abolished  altogether.  A  central  bureau,  located 
in  Wall  Street,  will  so  work  all  kinds  of  veins  and 
arteries,  auriferous,  argentiferous,  and  verdibackish,  as 
to  entice  out  all  their  values  on  call. 

The  traditions  about  gold  are  to  be  wrought  up  into 
poetry,  and  thus  forever  forgotten. 

We  have  been  put  in  possession  of  the  advance 
sheets  of  several  reports,  to  be  made  to  the  various 
State  legislatures  in  1969,  on  "The  Absence  of  Legis- 
lative Corruption,"  from  which  it  is  manifest,  that 
nothing  with  money  in  it  ever  reaches  the  capitals  of 
that  day,  and  that  the  members  are  left  to  the  tedious 
business  of  practical  legislation,  their  spare  time  being 
amused  with  antiquarian  researches  into  the  capital 
chances  for  money-making  between  1860  and  1870. 
It  is  also  apparent  from  these  coming  reports  that  great 
amusement  is  to  be  afforded  by  a  study  of  the  severely 
virtuous  styles  of  examinations,  conducted  by  commit- 
tees of  our  time,  into  alleged  briberies  of  fellow- 
members  ;  while  the  hotel  bills  of  the  cautious  investi- 
gators are  to  be  regarded  as  inimitable  specimens  of 
the  gastronomic  abundance  of  their  predecessors  in 
America. 

We  also  take  for  granted,  that  the  railway  system 
of  the  United  States  will  be  wonderfully  simplified. 


546     THE   COMIC   HISTORY  OF  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

We  now  make  it  a  matter  of  boasting  that  since  the 
beginning  of  our  railways,  in  1829,  we  have  extended 
them  until,  in  forty  years,  they  have  reached  a  length 
of  38,500  miles,  or  a  circuit  around  the  earth  one  and 
a  half  times ;  costing  in  their  construction  and  equip- 
ment $  1,700,000,000,  or  a  sum  equal  to  two  thirds  of 
the  debt  of  the  United  States ;  employing  8,000  en- 
gines and  135,000  cars,  or  enough,  if  placed  side  by 
side,  to  reach  from  New  York  to  Chicago,  and  carry- 
ing annually  145,000,000  of  passengers,  or  a  number 
more  than  four  times  the  whole  population,  men, 
women,  children,  and  John  Smiths  put  together.  We 
are  jubilant  over  the  completion,  in  four  years,  of  the 
Pacific  Eailroad,  1,900  miles  in  length,  forming  a 
line  from  New  York  to  San  Francisco  of  3,353  miles, 
straining  across  prairies,  chasing  off  herds  of  buffalo, 
spitting  Utah  with  a  skewer,  climbing  the  Sierras 
8,000  feet  high,  and  levelling  the  Eocky  Mountains 
with  iron  maces. 

All  these  performances  are,  in  the  absence  of  any- 
thing better,  and  in  our  poor  beginnings,  not  disdainful 
topics  of  conversation  or  newspaper  comment.  But 
in  the  near  future  we  take  it,  that  a  single  consolida- 
tion of  all  lines  in  the  hands  of  one  man,  —  whose 
name  at  present  we  mercifully  withhold,  —  replacing 
our  wooden  depots  with  stone  structures  tastefully 
decorated  with  waving  flags  and  live  eagles,  our  tressel- 
work  bridges  with  solid  granite  buttresses,  spanned  by 
iron  girders,  —  the  old  ones  being  kept  under  glass 
cases  for  curious  exhibition,  —  will  so  prolong,  carry 
around,  and  multiply  iron  ways,  that  the  entire  popu- 
lation of  the  United  States,  excepting,  perhaps,  news- 


TAKEN  FOE  GBANTED. 


547 


548    THE   COMIC   HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

paper  reporters  and  members  of  Congress,  will  be  in- 
vited several  times  a  year  to  take  a  pleasure  trip, 
gratuituously,  to  every  town  having  a  thousand  in- 
habitants, and  be  entertained  six  months  on  the  sus- 
pended dividends,  made  palatable  by  watered  stock 

Grumbling  will,  also,  in  those  gladsome  days,  be 
left  to  the  unnaturalized  Englishmen  among  us,  and 
to  those  wry-faced  observers  of  the  weather  and  crops, 
who  get  up  such  very  unlively  stacks  of  figures,  and 
elongate  their  rueful  faces  beneath  their  cold  shadows. 

Patriotism  will,  of  course,  be  merged  in  a  cosmo- 
politan feeling ;  for,  as  oiir  boundaries  will  naturally 
take  in  nearly  all  the  world,  what  is  outside  will  be 
the  subjects  of  our  pity  and  commiseration,  as  those 
portions  of  the  globe  unfortunately  left  outside  of 
England  were,  a  few  years  ago,  to  Englishmen. 

Chicago  will  then  have  so  many  elevators,  that  she 
will  raise  not  only  her  surface  above  Lake  Michigan, 
but  her  manners  to  a  point  where  mending  can  begin. 
New  York  will  doubtless  be  ruled  by  a  descendant  of 
the  Fisk-al  family,  who  will  utilize  New  Jersey  as  a 
railroad  depot  or  a  coal-yard.  Philadelphia,  letting 
go  of  New  York  as  a  bad  job,  beneath  her  satire, 
will  have  such  a  Bush-ing  library  as  to  be  the  book 
lender  of  the  Union.  Boston  will  be,  to  her  delight, 
roofed  in,  and  become  the  Publication  Office  of  Fields, 
Osgood,  &  Co.,  with  Faneuil  Hall  and  the  Athenaeum 
for  press-work  and  lithographing ;  while  the  Southern 
cities  along  the  coast  will  serve,  as  light-houses  for  the 
dark  landscapes  which  have  hitherto  glowered  behind 
them. 

Cotton  will'  be  more  than  king,  —  will  be  a  good 


TAKEN   FOR   GRANTED. 


549 


thrifty  farmer,  replacing  broom-sedgy  fields  with  smiling 
furrows,  razor-backed  hogs  with  blooded  stock,  and  will 
stand  out  in  round  completeness,  not  isolated  by  a 
heritage  which  kept  it  aloof  from  the  world,  but 
linked  in  a  rosy  chain  of  productive  good  with  the 
happy  brotherhood  of  work,  prosperity,  and  well-doing. 

We  need  hardly  add,  that  we  shall  leave  off  prais- 
ing ourselves  when  we  shall  most  deserve  praise,  and 
cease  to  be  sensitive  to  foreign  censure  when  we  shall 
be  hardy  enough  to  laugh  at  it. 

As  everybody  is  naturally  expecting  to  be  happy, 
so  we  expect  that  everybody  will  be,  without  being 
seriously  hurt  or  stunted  by  any  of  the  little  taps  of 
this  history.  Pax  vobiscum. 

Meanwhile,  and  until  all  these  blessed  times  and 
expectations  shall  converge  into  the  focalizing  future, 
we  trust  that  our  readers,  jolly,  good,  and  happy,  will 
get  over,  as  best  they  can,  the  intermediate  spaces, 
keeping  their  eye  and  faith  steadily  upon 


THE  END. 


55-5 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


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